Eye of the Nighthawker
By Stuart Slade
Weydown House, Sir Humphrey Appleday's Residence, Weydown Road, Haslemere, Surrey
"Good evening, Sir, Madam. Sir Humphrey and Lady Florentia are waiting for you in the drawing room. May I take your hats and coats?"
It said much for Genevieve Knight's long experience as a maid that she didn't even turn a hair when Angel took off her outdoor coat to reveal the two Beretta 98 pistols in her shoulder holsters. Nor did her expression change when Conrad took off his coat and showed himself to be unarmed. Knight's experience as a maid was indeed long, more than two centuries in fact, and her services were much sought-after by the members of the Piccadilly Circus when the time came for her to switch identities. Sir Humphrey Appleday considered his household to be most fortunate in having her in its service for these few brief decades. Nevertheless, a lady guest who was heavily-armed while the gentleman with her wasn't, did not quite conform to her previous experience. Not a trace of that fact had shown in her face.
"Thank you . . . ." The woman's contralto voice was cold, harsh and unyielding.
Knight was aware that she wasn't being deliberately threatening, it was just her normal voice. In fact, Knight's experience told her that this woman had recently been severely ill and hadn't yet fully recovered. "I'm Genevieve ma'am."
She took the offered coat, noting it was damp with rain and placed it in a closet by the front door for that purpose. She did the same for the gentleman. By the time she had done so, Lady Florentia Appleday had made her entrance.
"Conrad, it is a pleasure to see you again. And you must be Angel. My husband has spoken much of you with an unusual combination of affection and nervousness. Please, come on through to the drawing room. Genevieve, if you could be so kind as to bring in the refreshments? Sir Humphrey received an urgent call a few minutes ago and will join us as soon as he can. Angel, can I offer you a drink? My husband mentioned Bacardi 151?"
Angel looked inexpressibly sad. "I'm sorry, Lady Appleday, I got shot through the liver a few months back and I'm still not allowed to drink spirits. If, I could have some fruit juice?"
"Of course, my dear. You are fortunate to still be with us. In my day, a wound to the liver was mortal. We have orange, grapefruit or apple?"
"Orange, please. In your day, Lady Florentia?"
"Middle of the 19th century, in Afghanistan. My husband then was General Robert Sale. We retreated from Kabul together. He died from being shot in the liver a year later."
"Thank you. I was lucky, the bullet penetrated just one lobe and the doctors removed the whole lobe to stop the bleeding. An inch to the right and it would have shattered my spine."
"Yes, my dear, you were indeed fortunate. Conrad, pale sherry for you?"
"If I may have an Armagnac brandy, Lady Florentia."
Lady Florentia poured out the brandy and handed it to Conrad. "Has Humpty explained why we need your help?"
Conrad shook his head and then sipped at his brandy. "My word, Lady Florentia, this is a splendid Armagnac. Angel was teaching at Oxford when your invitation arrived so we made tracks down here."
"Very well, I'll explain now before Humpty joins us. If he tries to, our dinner will get cold and while he talks and we still won’t be any the wiser. Angel, has your wound affected what you can eat?"
Angel shook her head, looking mournfully at Conrad's brandy while she did so. "I'm fine now. I was on what amounted to baby food for a couple of weeks but that's all done."
"Ma'am. Dinner will be ready in thirty minutes, Sir Humphrey sends his apologies and will join you then."
"Very good, Genevieve and thank you." Lady Florentia opened the top of the chafing trolley Knight had brought in and sighed happily. "Genevieve is really splendid and our cook is first-class. We really are most fortunate. May I recommend the salmon and cream cheese roulettes? Now, to business. Have you ever heard of Nighthawkers?"
Conrad and Angel looked at each other, then both shook their heads. Lady Florentia looked thoughtful for a second. "They are indigent people who are in possession of metal-detecting equipment. If a major archeological find is made, they descend upon it and loot it of valuables during the hours of darkness. They then sell the stolen goods to dealers or collectors. The problem is, three quarters of the value of such a find, from a historical point of view, is where and how it was buried. 'Context' and 'stratification' are the technical words. All of that is lost when the nighthawkers steal it. Well, there was a major find up in Lincolnshire; a late Iron Age village with many very valuable and perfectly-preserved iron and bronze relics. Of course, as soon as the word got out, the nighthawkers made tracks for the site.
"The archeologists tried to keep it a secret but it was found eventually. The students there, most ill-advisedly in my opinion, attempted to put up a guard at night to protect the site. One of those students was a young protégé of ours. He was out there when the nighthawkers came and they beat him up, most viciously. There were three or four of them and they clubbed him down. Then they beat and kicked him unconscious. He's in hospital now and was so badly hurt. . . his poor legs . . ." Lady Florentia shook herself and her eyes hardened. Suddenly, Angel saw how she had acquired the nickname 'the Grenadier in petticoats'. "We were hoping that you, Conrad, could find out who did it and you, Angel, could stop this happening again. Please understand, this is not an official government job. If you can find the people who did that and put a stop to this group of nighthawkers at least, it will be a personal assignment from Humpty and I. I know you work entirely for money, Angel, so we will pay you properly of course."
"No you won’t." Angel had glanced at Conrad and got a slight nod of agreement. "This one's on us. All you need do is run interference for us if this gets bloody."
"That's . . . very fine of you." Lady Florentia seemed quite deeply affected. "He is such a nice boy, always polite and helpful. There was no need to treat him so brutally."
"Another thing we'll need, Lady Florentia." Conrad's mind was already turning over the options. "All the available information on these nighthawkers and their activities. Especially ones where assaults like this are involved."
"I think I can say with some degree of positive assurance, although not committing the officers or administration of the public offices in question to any standard of the completeness or accuracy of the available records, the requisite authorities will indeed be able to supply you, on a temporary basis of course, with the compendium of information to which you make reference, accepting of course that details of current cases that are the subject of existing legal proceedings may well be unavailable for release until said proceedings are completed regardless of the outcome of the cases in question." Sir Humphrey had come in and was beaming happily.
"There's another point." Angel was thinking through the implications of what they had been asked to do. "How far do you want us to go with this?"
"What do you mean, Angel?" Lady Florentia knew exactly what Angel meant. She wasn't quite sure though that her husband did.
"This is England, I'd rather do things legally here. Due process and so on. Only, I may not get the chance. Ideally, we’ll find out who these nighthawkers are, set a trap for them and once we’ve detained them with all the evidence we need, call the police. Only, things might not go that way. If it comes to a choice, let the matter drop or disappear them, which way would you like us to go.”
Sir Humphrey and Lady Florentia exchanged glances. It was Lady Florentia who explained. “When they beat that poor lad up, they were carrying spades so they could dig up the relics. They beat him with the edges of those spades. The poor dear wanted to be a footballer but they broke his legs several times, above and below the knees. He’ll be lucky if he walks again, let alone plays football. One of them hit him on the head, fracturing his skull.”
She watched while Angel reflexively touched the shallow grove in her own head where her skull had been fractured. “That doesn’t sound like just a beating to me. Hit somebody on the head with the edge of a spade, that’s intended to kill.”
"We will need to see his medical records as well." Conrad knew Angel well enough to realize she had spotted something out of order but was keeping quiet about it.
"That may prove to be, while desirable from the perspective of a proper investigation of this case and the due, if not necessarily legally authorized, penalties for the events in question, at variance with the regulations and administrative procedures adopted to ensure the confidentiality of a patient's medical records and their protection from illegal or unauthorized access, restrictions that may only be circumvented either by the consent of the patient in question of by obtaining a court order from the local magistrate, an order that would only be granted in unusual circumstances."
"Is the kid unconscious?" Angel asked the question, remembering her own most recent stay in hospital.
"No, I would describe his state as semi-conscious. He is in intense pain and heavily sedated. He might surface long enough to authorize the release of his records if you are fortunate."
"Oh, I think we will be. Do you have any samples of his signature around here?"
Sir Humphrey gave an impression of somebody who had just heard something he was now trying very hard to forget. Lady Florentia on the other hand just thought for a second. "We have a birthday card he sent us for Humpty's 56th birthday. "
Everybody smiled gently at that; Sir Humphrey was almost five times older than the sender had believed. "His name is Edward Rawlings?"
"Yes, we all called him Eddie. His nickname at University was Raw Eddie because he liked his steaks rare to the point of being bloody." Lady Florentia broke off, hearing Genevieve coming to announce that dinner was now served. "Conrad, Angel, in answer to your question, do what you have to."
County Hospital Louth, Lincolnshire.
Angel was leaning up against the wall, staring out of the hospital window, her mind far away and long ago. She was remembering the time in New York when the attentions of the NYPD had left her in much the same state that Eddie Rawlings was in now. If anything, he was in a worse condition than she had been and she had come close to having been beaten to death. The difference was that Rawlings was getting the best treatment an excellent hospital could provide. She had been thrown in a cell to die or get better according to her luck. She shook herself slightly and turned around to Conrad. "What do you think, Conrad?"
"This doesn't look like a casual beating to me. A couple of thieves wouldn’t do something like this. They might work him over but this looks to me like they tried to kill him. That would turn something that was little more than a minor theft into a murder case. These nighthawkers don't seem to me to be in the league where they would chance that."
"What makes me curious is why they broke his legs like this." Angel had a part of the case notes file on Rawling's injuries and was looking at the x-ray of his legs. The clear, sharp breaks made by the edges of the spades were very distinct. "That blow to his head was deliberate and intended to be a killer. So why did they spend time breaking his legs like this? Look at these wounds, Conrad, each one of them is near identical. Look also how the fracture lines across the bones are nearly parallel. He was damned near still and in the same position for each blow. I don’t know if you've ever been beaten this badly but when it's happened to me I was moving all over the place, trying to get away from the blows. He must have been held down, his legs broken and then they gave him what they thought was the death-blow. That takes planning."
Conrad was also looking at his part of the case-notes. By a strange coincidence, Rawlings had recovered consciousness just long enough to sign the records release before relapsing into a coma. The coincidence had been so suspiciously convenient that the hospital authorities had inspected the release form very carefully but concluded that the signature was genuine. In doing so, they had quite unwittingly resulted in a Triad forgery expert receiving a significant bonus to his monthly paycheck. Conrad had vowed to make a full confession to his part in the deception next time he was in the confessional. "Doesn't it strike you as odd that they went to the trouble of breaking the legs of a boy who wanted to be a professional footballer? Before they tried to kill him?"
"Breaking people's legs is a standard Gangland thing, you know that Conrad." Angel shrugged. "It's largely gone out of fashion now and even when it was commonplace, it was an alternative to killing people. If Rawlings had owed loan-sharks a lot of money or lost it gambling, that might explain the legs but not the effort to kill immediately afterwards. One can't collect money from a corpse. Frankly, this looks to me like deliberate torture."
Conrad shuddered, unwanted memories from his youth flooding back to him. This case has aspects to it that haunt both Angel and I. We will have to be careful it doesn't affect the decisions we make. "I was afraid you would say that, Angel. You know, this reminds me of the Kanya Tamaraptri case in Bangkok. It was the last one I worked on before we joined forces. Nightclub singer who was beaten to death."
"I remember the case." Angel looked pensive. "I was slightly involved in that myself, you know. Remember those loan-sharks you interviewed? Turned out one of them was skimming the take."
Conrad had remembered one of the men well, the one Vanna had warned could meet the Black Dragon Slayer. Only then did he realize the connection. The next question slipped out before he could stop himself. "What happened?"
Angel said nothing but just lifted an eyebrow. Conrad got the message; Angel had been an enforcer so she had enforced. Permanently. "The big problem with that case was trying to work out why the poor woman had been brutalized and how the other assaults fitted in. Once we understood that one didn't, everything else fell into place."
"It's a constant risk trans-women face." Angel didn’t sound particularly sympathetic but she never did. "They pick somebody up, their date doesn't realize and when he finds out, she gets a beating. If she's lucky. That doesn’t apply here though. Raw Eddie was just another college student. Being a field archeologist was just about the oddest thing he ever did."
"We'll have to join that archeology team." Conrad sounded very reflective. "The problem is that there is a TV crew there as well. They're filming the dig, part of a regular TV series. It's been around for years now."
"Not a problem." Angel had dealt with this problem before. "We have this with undercover work sometimes. We just speak to the director and make sure the undercover isn't in shot. Are we done with these files?"
"I'd like to get copies of these pictures. Otherwise, we can send them back to the records room." Conrad started packing the papers back into their folders. He was interrupted by the sound of an altercation outside. Quietly, he and Angel moved so they could hear what was being said.
"I want to see my boy." The man's voice was gruff, aggressive and grating.
"Please, he's my son. Let me see him." The woman's voice was a contrast, it sounded weak and nervous, the quaver only slightly suppressed. Conrad felt oddly certain that her husband beat her.
"I'm sorry, you can't go in there." Conrad recognized the Matron's voice. "Poor Eddie is mostly unconscious and in very poor condition. A simple infection could be very dangerous for him."
"That's a load of bull. We know you've let other people in there." Still aggressive, now with a distinct air of threat in the words. Speaking to a nurse like that was a very bad idea, addressing one who had a lot of authority in her ward was much worse. Conrad realized he had heard the accent many years before. It was straight Birmingham and he'd heard it when investigating the Jennifer Durham murder. It was almost impossible that any of the people who had been alive back then would have been active in this case. They would have been in their eighties at least.
"They were police officers gathering evidence and they wore special non-contamination suits. Now, please leave." The Matron had put an edge of authority into her voice, one that contrasted with the sympathy that was a nurse's standard. Conrad guessed that somebody was already alerting the police to the situation.
"Please, at least tell me how he's doing?" The woman was whining in a way that, with the best will in the world, Conrad couldn’t help having his teeth set on edge.
"Yeah, you'd better tell us that, bitch." The man's voice was now a definite snarl. Angel had no objection to another woman being called a bitch; she had been called much worse herself and that it didn't have any impact on her. She did, however, feel she had a debt to pay to the nursing profession and didn’t like being indebted to anybody. This was a chance to pay off some of that debt.
She banged the door open and strode out, her bearing and attitude openly menacing. In one hand was her Police badge, her other was positioned for a fast draw. "Inspector Angelique de Llorente. Matron, is there a problem here?"
"Mind your own business, copper." Angel stared at him and her eyes became a complete blank, so chilling that light seemed to fall into them and never emerge. There was, literally, not a shred of life in them. The man for some reason didn't take the very blatant hint. "Eddie's our kid, see."
"Then you had better let the people charged with saving his life do their work. Out, or you will be arrested for disorderly conduct and trespass." The words "and/or be shot dead while resisting arrest" were silent yet very completely audible.
The man grabbed his wife by the arm and pushed her towards the door. Conrad came out of the consulting office and stood beside Angel. His words were audible only to her. "Now that is very odd."
Louth Police Station, Lincolnshire.
"Cabinet Secretary's Office." Melanie Hall's voice came over the telephone with perfect clarity. Around Angel, the local police officers fought two conflicting instincts. One was to get closer and find out what was happening, the other to get further away in case there was nausea in the offing. Conrad and Angel had come in a few minutes before to borrow a secure telephone with Angel brandishing her badge. She had come to the conclusion she rather liked being a police officer. It hadn't escaped Conrad's notice that an hour earlier she had referred to Police officers doing undercover work as 'we'.
"Hi, Mel, this is Angel. Could I speak to Sir Humphrey please?"
"Sir Humphrey is in a meeting, Angel. Could I put you through to Bernard?"
"Please." Angel waited for a few seconds. "Hello, Bernard. . . . . . Yes, I'm much better now, thank you. Just a quick question about Edward Rawlings, Sir Humphrey's protégé. How did they meet? . . . .. . I see, thank you."
Angel put down the telephone and drew her lower lip between her teeth for a moment. "Well, that is very odd. Raw Eddie's parents were junior civil servants in the Cabinet Office. Humpty took Eddie under his wing after they were killed in a car crash about five years ago."
2008 - Eye of the Nighthawker
Re: 2008 - Eye of the Nighthawker
Eye of the Nighthawker
By Stuart Slade
Weydown House, Sir Humphrey Appleday's Residence, Weydown Road, Haslemere, Surrey
"Good evening, Sir, Madam. Sir Humphrey and Lady Florentia are waiting for you in the drawing room. May I take your hats and coats?"
It said much for Genevieve Knight's long experience as a maid that she didn't even turn a hair when Angel took off her outdoor coat to reveal the two Beretta 98 pistols in her shoulder holsters. Nor did her expression change when Conrad took off his coat and showed himself to be unarmed. Knight's experience as a maid was indeed long, more than two centuries in fact, and her services were much sought-after by the members of the Piccadilly Circus when the time came for her to switch identities. Sir Humphrey Appleday considered his household to be most fortunate in having her in its service for these few brief decades. Nevertheless, a lady guest who was heavily-armed while the gentleman with her wasn't, did not quite conform to her previous experience. Not a trace of that fact had shown in her face.
"Thank you . . . ." The woman's contralto voice was cold, harsh and unyielding.
Knight was aware that she wasn't being deliberately threatening, it was just her normal voice. In fact, Knight's experience told her that this woman had recently been severely ill and hadn't yet fully recovered. "I'm Genevieve ma'am."
She took the offered coat, noting it was damp with rain and placed it in a closet by the front door for that purpose. She did the same for the gentleman. By the time she had done so, Lady Florentia Appleday had made her entrance.
"Conrad, it is a pleasure to see you again. And you must be Angel. My husband has spoken much of you with an unusual combination of affection and nervousness. Please, come on through to the drawing room. Genevieve, if you could be so kind as to bring in the refreshments? Sir Humphrey received an urgent call a few minutes ago and will join us as soon as he can. Angel, can I offer you a drink? My husband mentioned Bacardi 151?"
Angel looked inexpressibly sad. "I'm sorry, Lady Appleday, I got shot through the liver a few months back and I'm still not allowed to drink spirits. If, I could have some fruit juice?"
"Of course, my dear. You are fortunate to still be with us. In my day, a wound to the liver was mortal. We have orange, grapefruit or apple?"
"Orange, please. In your day, Lady Florentia?"
"Middle of the 19th century, in Afghanistan. My husband then was General Robert Sale. We retreated from Kabul together. He died from being shot in the liver a year later."
"Thank you. I was lucky, the bullet penetrated just one lobe and the doctors removed the whole lobe to stop the bleeding. An inch to the right and it would have shattered my spine."
"Yes, my dear, you were indeed fortunate. Conrad, pale sherry for you?"
"If I may have an Armagnac brandy, Lady Florentia."
Lady Florentia poured out the brandy and handed it to Conrad. "Has Humpty explained why we need your help?"
Conrad shook his head and then sipped at his brandy. "My word, Lady Florentia, this is a splendid Armagnac. Angel was teaching at Oxford when your invitation arrived so we made tracks down here."
"Very well, I'll explain now before Humpty joins us. If he tries to, our dinner will get cold and while he talks and we still won’t be any the wiser. Angel, has your wound affected what you can eat?"
Angel shook her head, looking mournfully at Conrad's brandy while she did so. "I'm fine now. I was on what amounted to baby food for a couple of weeks but that's all done."
"Ma'am. Dinner will be ready in thirty minutes, Sir Humphrey sends his apologies and will join you then."
"Very good, Genevieve and thank you." Lady Florentia opened the top of the chafing trolley Knight had brought in and sighed happily. "Genevieve is really splendid and our cook is first-class. We really are most fortunate. May I recommend the salmon and cream cheese roulettes? Now, to business. Have you ever heard of Nighthawkers?"
Conrad and Angel looked at each other, then both shook their heads. Lady Florentia looked thoughtful for a second. "They are indigent people who are in possession of metal-detecting equipment. If a major archeological find is made, they descend upon it and loot it of valuables during the hours of darkness. They then sell the stolen goods to dealers or collectors. The problem is, three quarters of the value of such a find, from a historical point of view, is where and how it was buried. 'Context' and 'stratification' are the technical words. All of that is lost when the nighthawkers steal it. Well, there was a major find up in Lincolnshire; a late Iron Age village with many very valuable and perfectly-preserved iron and bronze relics. Of course, as soon as the word got out, the nighthawkers made tracks for the site.
"The archeologists tried to keep it a secret but it was found eventually. The students there, most ill-advisedly in my opinion, attempted to put up a guard at night to protect the site. One of those students was a young protégé of ours. He was out there when the nighthawkers came and they beat him up, most viciously. There were three or four of them and they clubbed him down. Then they beat and kicked him unconscious. He's in hospital now and was so badly hurt. . . his poor legs . . ." Lady Florentia shook herself and her eyes hardened. Suddenly, Angel saw how she had acquired the nickname 'the Grenadier in petticoats'. "We were hoping that you, Conrad, could find out who did it and you, Angel, could stop this happening again. Please understand, this is not an official government job. If you can find the people who did that and put a stop to this group of nighthawkers at least, it will be a personal assignment from Humpty and I. I know you work entirely for money, Angel, so we will pay you properly of course."
"No you won’t." Angel had glanced at Conrad and got a slight nod of agreement. "This one's on us. All you need do is run interference for us if this gets bloody."
"That's . . . very fine of you." Lady Florentia seemed quite deeply affected. "He is such a nice boy, always polite and helpful. There was no need to treat him so brutally."
"Another thing we'll need, Lady Florentia." Conrad's mind was already turning over the options. "All the available information on these nighthawkers and their activities. Especially ones where assaults like this are involved."
"I think I can say with some degree of positive assurance, although not committing the officers or administration of the public offices in question to any standard of the completeness or accuracy of the available records, the requisite authorities will indeed be able to supply you, on a temporary basis of course, with the compendium of information to which you make reference, accepting of course that details of current cases that are the subject of existing legal proceedings may well be unavailable for release until said proceedings are completed regardless of the outcome of the cases in question." Sir Humphrey had come in and was beaming happily.
"There's another point." Angel was thinking through the implications of what they had been asked to do. "How far do you want us to go with this?"
"What do you mean, Angel?" Lady Florentia knew exactly what Angel meant. She wasn't quite sure though that her husband did.
"This is England, I'd rather do things legally here. Due process and so on. Only, I may not get the chance. Ideally, we’ll find out who these nighthawkers are, set a trap for them and once we’ve detained them with all the evidence we need, call the police. Only, things might not go that way. If it comes to a choice, let the matter drop or disappear them, which way would you like us to go.”
Sir Humphrey and Lady Florentia exchanged glances. It was Lady Florentia who explained. “When they beat that poor lad up, they were carrying spades so they could dig up the relics. They beat him with the edges of those spades. The poor dear wanted to be a footballer but they broke his legs several times, above and below the knees. He’ll be lucky if he walks again, let alone plays football. One of them hit him on the head, fracturing his skull.”
She watched while Angel reflexively touched the shallow grove in her own head where her skull had been fractured. “That doesn’t sound like just a beating to me. Hit somebody on the head with the edge of a spade, that’s intended to kill.”
"We will need to see his medical records as well." Conrad knew Angel well enough to realize she had spotted something out of order but was keeping quiet about it.
"That may prove to be, while desirable from the perspective of a proper investigation of this case and the due, if not necessarily legally authorized, penalties for the events in question, at variance with the regulations and administrative procedures adopted to ensure the confidentiality of a patient's medical records and their protection from illegal or unauthorized access, restrictions that may only be circumvented either by the consent of the patient in question of by obtaining a court order from the local magistrate, an order that would only be granted in unusual circumstances."
"Is the kid unconscious?" Angel asked the question, remembering her own most recent stay in hospital.
"No, I would describe his state as semi-conscious. He is in intense pain and heavily sedated. He might surface long enough to authorize the release of his records if you are fortunate."
"Oh, I think we will be. Do you have any samples of his signature around here?"
Sir Humphrey gave an impression of somebody who had just heard something he was now trying very hard to forget. Lady Florentia on the other hand just thought for a second. "We have a birthday card he sent us for Humpty's 56th birthday. "
Everybody smiled gently at that; Sir Humphrey was almost five times older than the sender had believed. "His name is Edward Rawlings?"
"Yes, we all called him Eddie. His nickname at University was Raw Eddie because he liked his steaks rare to the point of being bloody." Lady Florentia broke off, hearing Genevieve coming to announce that dinner was now served. "Conrad, Angel, in answer to your question, do what you have to."
County Hospital Louth, Lincolnshire.
Angel was leaning up against the wall, staring out of the hospital window, her mind far away and long ago. She was remembering the time in New York when the attentions of the NYPD had left her in much the same state that Eddie Rawlings was in now. If anything, he was in a worse condition than she had been and she had come close to having been beaten to death. The difference was that Rawlings was getting the best treatment an excellent hospital could provide. She had been thrown in a cell to die or get better according to her luck. She shook herself slightly and turned around to Conrad. "What do you think, Conrad?"
"This doesn't look like a casual beating to me. A couple of thieves wouldn’t do something like this. They might work him over but this looks to me like they tried to kill him. That would turn something that was little more than a minor theft into a murder case. These nighthawkers don't seem to me to be in the league where they would chance that."
"What makes me curious is why they broke his legs like this." Angel had a part of the case notes file on Rawling's injuries and was looking at the x-ray of his legs. The clear, sharp breaks made by the edges of the spades were very distinct. "That blow to his head was deliberate and intended to be a killer. So why did they spend time breaking his legs like this? Look at these wounds, Conrad, each one of them is near identical. Look also how the fracture lines across the bones are nearly parallel. He was damned near still and in the same position for each blow. I don’t know if you've ever been beaten this badly but when it's happened to me I was moving all over the place, trying to get away from the blows. He must have been held down, his legs broken and then they gave him what they thought was the death-blow. That takes planning."
Conrad was also looking at his part of the case-notes. By a strange coincidence, Rawlings had recovered consciousness just long enough to sign the records release before relapsing into a coma. The coincidence had been so suspiciously convenient that the hospital authorities had inspected the release form very carefully but concluded that the signature was genuine. In doing so, they had quite unwittingly resulted in a Triad forgery expert receiving a significant bonus to his monthly paycheck. Conrad had vowed to make a full confession to his part in the deception next time he was in the confessional. "Doesn't it strike you as odd that they went to the trouble of breaking the legs of a boy who wanted to be a professional footballer? Before they tried to kill him?"
"Breaking people's legs is a standard Gangland thing, you know that Conrad." Angel shrugged. "It's largely gone out of fashion now and even when it was commonplace, it was an alternative to killing people. If Rawlings had owed loan-sharks a lot of money or lost it gambling, that might explain the legs but not the effort to kill immediately afterwards. One can't collect money from a corpse. Frankly, this looks to me like deliberate torture."
Conrad shuddered, unwanted memories from his youth flooding back to him. This case has aspects to it that haunt both Angel and I. We will have to be careful it doesn't affect the decisions we make. "I was afraid you would say that, Angel. You know, this reminds me of the Kanya Tamaraptri case in Bangkok. It was the last one I worked on before we joined forces. Nightclub singer who was beaten to death."
"I remember the case." Angel looked pensive. "I was slightly involved in that myself, you know. Remember those loan-sharks you interviewed? Turned out one of them was skimming the take."
Conrad had remembered one of the men well, the one Vanna had warned could meet the Black Dragon Slayer. Only then did he realize the connection. The next question slipped out before he could stop himself. "What happened?"
Angel said nothing but just lifted an eyebrow. Conrad got the message; Angel had been an enforcer so she had enforced. Permanently. "The big problem with that case was trying to work out why the poor woman had been brutalized and how the other assaults fitted in. Once we understood that one didn't, everything else fell into place."
"It's a constant risk trans-women face." Angel didn’t sound particularly sympathetic but she never did. "They pick somebody up, their date doesn't realize and when he finds out, she gets a beating. If she's lucky. That doesn’t apply here though. Raw Eddie was just another college student. Being a field archeologist was just about the oddest thing he ever did."
"We'll have to join that archeology team." Conrad sounded very reflective. "The problem is that there is a TV crew there as well. They're filming the dig, part of a regular TV series. It's been around for years now."
"Not a problem." Angel had dealt with this problem before. "We have this with undercover work sometimes. We just speak to the director and make sure the undercover isn't in shot. Are we done with these files?"
"I'd like to get copies of these pictures. Otherwise, we can send them back to the records room." Conrad started packing the papers back into their folders. He was interrupted by the sound of an altercation outside. Quietly, he and Angel moved so they could hear what was being said.
"I want to see my boy." The man's voice was gruff, aggressive and grating.
"Please, he's my son. Let me see him." The woman's voice was a contrast, it sounded weak and nervous, the quaver only slightly suppressed. Conrad felt oddly certain that her husband beat her.
"I'm sorry, you can't go in there." Conrad recognized the Matron's voice. "Poor Eddie is mostly unconscious and in very poor condition. A simple infection could be very dangerous for him."
"That's a load of bull. We know you've let other people in there." Still aggressive, now with a distinct air of threat in the words. Speaking to a nurse like that was a very bad idea, addressing one who had a lot of authority in her ward was much worse. Conrad realized he had heard the accent many years before. It was straight Birmingham and he'd heard it when investigating the Jennifer Durham murder. It was almost impossible that any of the people who had been alive back then would have been active in this case. They would have been in their eighties at least.
"They were police officers gathering evidence and they wore special non-contamination suits. Now, please leave." The Matron had put an edge of authority into her voice, one that contrasted with the sympathy that was a nurse's standard. Conrad guessed that somebody was already alerting the police to the situation.
"Please, at least tell me how he's doing?" The woman was whining in a way that, with the best will in the world, Conrad couldn’t help having his teeth set on edge.
"Yeah, you'd better tell us that, bitch." The man's voice was now a definite snarl. Angel had no objection to another woman being called a bitch; she had been called much worse herself and that it didn't have any impact on her. She did, however, feel she had a debt to pay to the nursing profession and didn’t like being indebted to anybody. This was a chance to pay off some of that debt.
She banged the door open and strode out, her bearing and attitude openly menacing. In one hand was her Police badge, her other was positioned for a fast draw. "Inspector Angelique de Llorente. Matron, is there a problem here?"
"Mind your own business, copper." Angel stared at him and her eyes became a complete blank, so chilling that light seemed to fall into them and never emerge. There was, literally, not a shred of life in them. The man for some reason didn't take the very blatant hint. "Eddie's our kid, see."
"Then you had better let the people charged with saving his life do their work. Out, or you will be arrested for disorderly conduct and trespass." The words "and/or be shot dead while resisting arrest" were silent yet very completely audible.
The man grabbed his wife by the arm and pushed her towards the door. Conrad came out of the consulting office and stood beside Angel. His words were audible only to her. "Now that is very odd."
Louth Police Station, Lincolnshire.
"Cabinet Secretary's Office." Melanie Hall's voice came over the telephone with perfect clarity. Around Angel, the local police officers fought two conflicting instincts. One was to get closer and find out what was happening, the other to get further away in case there was nausea in the offing. Conrad and Angel had come in a few minutes before to borrow a secure telephone with Angel brandishing her badge. She had come to the conclusion she rather liked being a police officer. It hadn't escaped Conrad's notice that an hour earlier she had referred to Police officers doing undercover work as 'we'.
"Hi, Mel, this is Angel. Could I speak to Sir Humphrey please?"
"Sir Humphrey is in a meeting, Angel. Could I put you through to Bernard?"
"Please." Angel waited for a few seconds. "Hello, Bernard. . . . . . Yes, I'm much better now, thank you. Just a quick question about Edward Rawlings, Sir Humphrey's protégé. How did they meet? . . . .. . I see, thank you."
Angel put down the telephone and drew her lower lip between her teeth for a moment. "Well, that is very odd. Raw Eddie's parents were junior civil servants in the Cabinet Office. Humpty took Eddie under his wing after they were killed in a car crash about five years ago."
By Stuart Slade
Weydown House, Sir Humphrey Appleday's Residence, Weydown Road, Haslemere, Surrey
"Good evening, Sir, Madam. Sir Humphrey and Lady Florentia are waiting for you in the drawing room. May I take your hats and coats?"
It said much for Genevieve Knight's long experience as a maid that she didn't even turn a hair when Angel took off her outdoor coat to reveal the two Beretta 98 pistols in her shoulder holsters. Nor did her expression change when Conrad took off his coat and showed himself to be unarmed. Knight's experience as a maid was indeed long, more than two centuries in fact, and her services were much sought-after by the members of the Piccadilly Circus when the time came for her to switch identities. Sir Humphrey Appleday considered his household to be most fortunate in having her in its service for these few brief decades. Nevertheless, a lady guest who was heavily-armed while the gentleman with her wasn't, did not quite conform to her previous experience. Not a trace of that fact had shown in her face.
"Thank you . . . ." The woman's contralto voice was cold, harsh and unyielding.
Knight was aware that she wasn't being deliberately threatening, it was just her normal voice. In fact, Knight's experience told her that this woman had recently been severely ill and hadn't yet fully recovered. "I'm Genevieve ma'am."
She took the offered coat, noting it was damp with rain and placed it in a closet by the front door for that purpose. She did the same for the gentleman. By the time she had done so, Lady Florentia Appleday had made her entrance.
"Conrad, it is a pleasure to see you again. And you must be Angel. My husband has spoken much of you with an unusual combination of affection and nervousness. Please, come on through to the drawing room. Genevieve, if you could be so kind as to bring in the refreshments? Sir Humphrey received an urgent call a few minutes ago and will join us as soon as he can. Angel, can I offer you a drink? My husband mentioned Bacardi 151?"
Angel looked inexpressibly sad. "I'm sorry, Lady Appleday, I got shot through the liver a few months back and I'm still not allowed to drink spirits. If, I could have some fruit juice?"
"Of course, my dear. You are fortunate to still be with us. In my day, a wound to the liver was mortal. We have orange, grapefruit or apple?"
"Orange, please. In your day, Lady Florentia?"
"Middle of the 19th century, in Afghanistan. My husband then was General Robert Sale. We retreated from Kabul together. He died from being shot in the liver a year later."
"Thank you. I was lucky, the bullet penetrated just one lobe and the doctors removed the whole lobe to stop the bleeding. An inch to the right and it would have shattered my spine."
"Yes, my dear, you were indeed fortunate. Conrad, pale sherry for you?"
"If I may have an Armagnac brandy, Lady Florentia."
Lady Florentia poured out the brandy and handed it to Conrad. "Has Humpty explained why we need your help?"
Conrad shook his head and then sipped at his brandy. "My word, Lady Florentia, this is a splendid Armagnac. Angel was teaching at Oxford when your invitation arrived so we made tracks down here."
"Very well, I'll explain now before Humpty joins us. If he tries to, our dinner will get cold and while he talks and we still won’t be any the wiser. Angel, has your wound affected what you can eat?"
Angel shook her head, looking mournfully at Conrad's brandy while she did so. "I'm fine now. I was on what amounted to baby food for a couple of weeks but that's all done."
"Ma'am. Dinner will be ready in thirty minutes, Sir Humphrey sends his apologies and will join you then."
"Very good, Genevieve and thank you." Lady Florentia opened the top of the chafing trolley Knight had brought in and sighed happily. "Genevieve is really splendid and our cook is first-class. We really are most fortunate. May I recommend the salmon and cream cheese roulettes? Now, to business. Have you ever heard of Nighthawkers?"
Conrad and Angel looked at each other, then both shook their heads. Lady Florentia looked thoughtful for a second. "They are indigent people who are in possession of metal-detecting equipment. If a major archeological find is made, they descend upon it and loot it of valuables during the hours of darkness. They then sell the stolen goods to dealers or collectors. The problem is, three quarters of the value of such a find, from a historical point of view, is where and how it was buried. 'Context' and 'stratification' are the technical words. All of that is lost when the nighthawkers steal it. Well, there was a major find up in Lincolnshire; a late Iron Age village with many very valuable and perfectly-preserved iron and bronze relics. Of course, as soon as the word got out, the nighthawkers made tracks for the site.
"The archeologists tried to keep it a secret but it was found eventually. The students there, most ill-advisedly in my opinion, attempted to put up a guard at night to protect the site. One of those students was a young protégé of ours. He was out there when the nighthawkers came and they beat him up, most viciously. There were three or four of them and they clubbed him down. Then they beat and kicked him unconscious. He's in hospital now and was so badly hurt. . . his poor legs . . ." Lady Florentia shook herself and her eyes hardened. Suddenly, Angel saw how she had acquired the nickname 'the Grenadier in petticoats'. "We were hoping that you, Conrad, could find out who did it and you, Angel, could stop this happening again. Please understand, this is not an official government job. If you can find the people who did that and put a stop to this group of nighthawkers at least, it will be a personal assignment from Humpty and I. I know you work entirely for money, Angel, so we will pay you properly of course."
"No you won’t." Angel had glanced at Conrad and got a slight nod of agreement. "This one's on us. All you need do is run interference for us if this gets bloody."
"That's . . . very fine of you." Lady Florentia seemed quite deeply affected. "He is such a nice boy, always polite and helpful. There was no need to treat him so brutally."
"Another thing we'll need, Lady Florentia." Conrad's mind was already turning over the options. "All the available information on these nighthawkers and their activities. Especially ones where assaults like this are involved."
"I think I can say with some degree of positive assurance, although not committing the officers or administration of the public offices in question to any standard of the completeness or accuracy of the available records, the requisite authorities will indeed be able to supply you, on a temporary basis of course, with the compendium of information to which you make reference, accepting of course that details of current cases that are the subject of existing legal proceedings may well be unavailable for release until said proceedings are completed regardless of the outcome of the cases in question." Sir Humphrey had come in and was beaming happily.
"There's another point." Angel was thinking through the implications of what they had been asked to do. "How far do you want us to go with this?"
"What do you mean, Angel?" Lady Florentia knew exactly what Angel meant. She wasn't quite sure though that her husband did.
"This is England, I'd rather do things legally here. Due process and so on. Only, I may not get the chance. Ideally, we’ll find out who these nighthawkers are, set a trap for them and once we’ve detained them with all the evidence we need, call the police. Only, things might not go that way. If it comes to a choice, let the matter drop or disappear them, which way would you like us to go.”
Sir Humphrey and Lady Florentia exchanged glances. It was Lady Florentia who explained. “When they beat that poor lad up, they were carrying spades so they could dig up the relics. They beat him with the edges of those spades. The poor dear wanted to be a footballer but they broke his legs several times, above and below the knees. He’ll be lucky if he walks again, let alone plays football. One of them hit him on the head, fracturing his skull.”
She watched while Angel reflexively touched the shallow grove in her own head where her skull had been fractured. “That doesn’t sound like just a beating to me. Hit somebody on the head with the edge of a spade, that’s intended to kill.”
"We will need to see his medical records as well." Conrad knew Angel well enough to realize she had spotted something out of order but was keeping quiet about it.
"That may prove to be, while desirable from the perspective of a proper investigation of this case and the due, if not necessarily legally authorized, penalties for the events in question, at variance with the regulations and administrative procedures adopted to ensure the confidentiality of a patient's medical records and their protection from illegal or unauthorized access, restrictions that may only be circumvented either by the consent of the patient in question of by obtaining a court order from the local magistrate, an order that would only be granted in unusual circumstances."
"Is the kid unconscious?" Angel asked the question, remembering her own most recent stay in hospital.
"No, I would describe his state as semi-conscious. He is in intense pain and heavily sedated. He might surface long enough to authorize the release of his records if you are fortunate."
"Oh, I think we will be. Do you have any samples of his signature around here?"
Sir Humphrey gave an impression of somebody who had just heard something he was now trying very hard to forget. Lady Florentia on the other hand just thought for a second. "We have a birthday card he sent us for Humpty's 56th birthday. "
Everybody smiled gently at that; Sir Humphrey was almost five times older than the sender had believed. "His name is Edward Rawlings?"
"Yes, we all called him Eddie. His nickname at University was Raw Eddie because he liked his steaks rare to the point of being bloody." Lady Florentia broke off, hearing Genevieve coming to announce that dinner was now served. "Conrad, Angel, in answer to your question, do what you have to."
County Hospital Louth, Lincolnshire.
Angel was leaning up against the wall, staring out of the hospital window, her mind far away and long ago. She was remembering the time in New York when the attentions of the NYPD had left her in much the same state that Eddie Rawlings was in now. If anything, he was in a worse condition than she had been and she had come close to having been beaten to death. The difference was that Rawlings was getting the best treatment an excellent hospital could provide. She had been thrown in a cell to die or get better according to her luck. She shook herself slightly and turned around to Conrad. "What do you think, Conrad?"
"This doesn't look like a casual beating to me. A couple of thieves wouldn’t do something like this. They might work him over but this looks to me like they tried to kill him. That would turn something that was little more than a minor theft into a murder case. These nighthawkers don't seem to me to be in the league where they would chance that."
"What makes me curious is why they broke his legs like this." Angel had a part of the case notes file on Rawling's injuries and was looking at the x-ray of his legs. The clear, sharp breaks made by the edges of the spades were very distinct. "That blow to his head was deliberate and intended to be a killer. So why did they spend time breaking his legs like this? Look at these wounds, Conrad, each one of them is near identical. Look also how the fracture lines across the bones are nearly parallel. He was damned near still and in the same position for each blow. I don’t know if you've ever been beaten this badly but when it's happened to me I was moving all over the place, trying to get away from the blows. He must have been held down, his legs broken and then they gave him what they thought was the death-blow. That takes planning."
Conrad was also looking at his part of the case-notes. By a strange coincidence, Rawlings had recovered consciousness just long enough to sign the records release before relapsing into a coma. The coincidence had been so suspiciously convenient that the hospital authorities had inspected the release form very carefully but concluded that the signature was genuine. In doing so, they had quite unwittingly resulted in a Triad forgery expert receiving a significant bonus to his monthly paycheck. Conrad had vowed to make a full confession to his part in the deception next time he was in the confessional. "Doesn't it strike you as odd that they went to the trouble of breaking the legs of a boy who wanted to be a professional footballer? Before they tried to kill him?"
"Breaking people's legs is a standard Gangland thing, you know that Conrad." Angel shrugged. "It's largely gone out of fashion now and even when it was commonplace, it was an alternative to killing people. If Rawlings had owed loan-sharks a lot of money or lost it gambling, that might explain the legs but not the effort to kill immediately afterwards. One can't collect money from a corpse. Frankly, this looks to me like deliberate torture."
Conrad shuddered, unwanted memories from his youth flooding back to him. This case has aspects to it that haunt both Angel and I. We will have to be careful it doesn't affect the decisions we make. "I was afraid you would say that, Angel. You know, this reminds me of the Kanya Tamaraptri case in Bangkok. It was the last one I worked on before we joined forces. Nightclub singer who was beaten to death."
"I remember the case." Angel looked pensive. "I was slightly involved in that myself, you know. Remember those loan-sharks you interviewed? Turned out one of them was skimming the take."
Conrad had remembered one of the men well, the one Vanna had warned could meet the Black Dragon Slayer. Only then did he realize the connection. The next question slipped out before he could stop himself. "What happened?"
Angel said nothing but just lifted an eyebrow. Conrad got the message; Angel had been an enforcer so she had enforced. Permanently. "The big problem with that case was trying to work out why the poor woman had been brutalized and how the other assaults fitted in. Once we understood that one didn't, everything else fell into place."
"It's a constant risk trans-women face." Angel didn’t sound particularly sympathetic but she never did. "They pick somebody up, their date doesn't realize and when he finds out, she gets a beating. If she's lucky. That doesn’t apply here though. Raw Eddie was just another college student. Being a field archeologist was just about the oddest thing he ever did."
"We'll have to join that archeology team." Conrad sounded very reflective. "The problem is that there is a TV crew there as well. They're filming the dig, part of a regular TV series. It's been around for years now."
"Not a problem." Angel had dealt with this problem before. "We have this with undercover work sometimes. We just speak to the director and make sure the undercover isn't in shot. Are we done with these files?"
"I'd like to get copies of these pictures. Otherwise, we can send them back to the records room." Conrad started packing the papers back into their folders. He was interrupted by the sound of an altercation outside. Quietly, he and Angel moved so they could hear what was being said.
"I want to see my boy." The man's voice was gruff, aggressive and grating.
"Please, he's my son. Let me see him." The woman's voice was a contrast, it sounded weak and nervous, the quaver only slightly suppressed. Conrad felt oddly certain that her husband beat her.
"I'm sorry, you can't go in there." Conrad recognized the Matron's voice. "Poor Eddie is mostly unconscious and in very poor condition. A simple infection could be very dangerous for him."
"That's a load of bull. We know you've let other people in there." Still aggressive, now with a distinct air of threat in the words. Speaking to a nurse like that was a very bad idea, addressing one who had a lot of authority in her ward was much worse. Conrad realized he had heard the accent many years before. It was straight Birmingham and he'd heard it when investigating the Jennifer Durham murder. It was almost impossible that any of the people who had been alive back then would have been active in this case. They would have been in their eighties at least.
"They were police officers gathering evidence and they wore special non-contamination suits. Now, please leave." The Matron had put an edge of authority into her voice, one that contrasted with the sympathy that was a nurse's standard. Conrad guessed that somebody was already alerting the police to the situation.
"Please, at least tell me how he's doing?" The woman was whining in a way that, with the best will in the world, Conrad couldn’t help having his teeth set on edge.
"Yeah, you'd better tell us that, bitch." The man's voice was now a definite snarl. Angel had no objection to another woman being called a bitch; she had been called much worse herself and that it didn't have any impact on her. She did, however, feel she had a debt to pay to the nursing profession and didn’t like being indebted to anybody. This was a chance to pay off some of that debt.
She banged the door open and strode out, her bearing and attitude openly menacing. In one hand was her Police badge, her other was positioned for a fast draw. "Inspector Angelique de Llorente. Matron, is there a problem here?"
"Mind your own business, copper." Angel stared at him and her eyes became a complete blank, so chilling that light seemed to fall into them and never emerge. There was, literally, not a shred of life in them. The man for some reason didn't take the very blatant hint. "Eddie's our kid, see."
"Then you had better let the people charged with saving his life do their work. Out, or you will be arrested for disorderly conduct and trespass." The words "and/or be shot dead while resisting arrest" were silent yet very completely audible.
The man grabbed his wife by the arm and pushed her towards the door. Conrad came out of the consulting office and stood beside Angel. His words were audible only to her. "Now that is very odd."
Louth Police Station, Lincolnshire.
"Cabinet Secretary's Office." Melanie Hall's voice came over the telephone with perfect clarity. Around Angel, the local police officers fought two conflicting instincts. One was to get closer and find out what was happening, the other to get further away in case there was nausea in the offing. Conrad and Angel had come in a few minutes before to borrow a secure telephone with Angel brandishing her badge. She had come to the conclusion she rather liked being a police officer. It hadn't escaped Conrad's notice that an hour earlier she had referred to Police officers doing undercover work as 'we'.
"Hi, Mel, this is Angel. Could I speak to Sir Humphrey please?"
"Sir Humphrey is in a meeting, Angel. Could I put you through to Bernard?"
"Please." Angel waited for a few seconds. "Hello, Bernard. . . . . . Yes, I'm much better now, thank you. Just a quick question about Edward Rawlings, Sir Humphrey's protégé. How did they meet? . . . .. . I see, thank you."
Angel put down the telephone and drew her lower lip between her teeth for a moment. "Well, that is very odd. Raw Eddie's parents were junior civil servants in the Cabinet Office. Humpty took Eddie under his wing after they were killed in a car crash about five years ago."
Re: 2008 - Eye of the Nighthawker
Chapter Two
Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"Good morning. I'm Penelope Sexton, the manager of the student team here. We're all from the Archeology Department of the University of Lincolnshire. You are Conrad and Angelique de Llorente?"
"We are. We have our National Identification Cards for you, Miss Sexton." Conrad spoke gravely despite the informal atmosphere of the dig site. He was also hiding his amusement at the knowledge Angel had sorted through her collection of National Identity Cards and picked one more or less at random.
Their host actually flushed pink with embarrassment. "Actually, its Doctor Sexton but everybody calls me Penny, The undergrads call me Sexy Penny."
Angel raised an eyebrow and Penny hastened to explain. "It's a sort of game the undergrads play. Take the normal nickname from somebody's first and then an adjective derived from their family name. I'm a Sexton, so, Sexy Penny. The field archeologist in charge is Phillip Hardy, so he became Hardly Phil. They can be really clever sometimes, but I don't know what they'll come up with for Angelique de Llorente."
"Most people just call me Angel." Angel looked around at the site. "What do we have here and how bad is the Nighthawker problem?"
Penny absent-mindedly twirled a strand of her hair around her finger. "How much do you know about iron age archeology?"
"Absolutely nothing." The answer came from Conrad and Angel is a perfect chorus. Conrad added a further explanation, "We’ve never even been on a site like this before. A friend of ours is involved in the Flavian Amphitheater dig in Rome and she's told us some basics but its best if you assume we know nothing at all and teach us from the ground up?"
Penny smiled at them. To meet people who knew nothing and were happy to admit it was a blessed relief. Although she didn’t know it, she had been the subject of an intensive security check over the last few days and had come up clean. So much so, that the Security Service was thinking of recruiting her. "All right! The standard living unit back then was called a round house. They used walls made either of stone or of wooden posts joined by wattle-and-daub panels and a conical thatched roof. Usually they are somewhere between 15 and 45 feet in diameter, the small ones are single-family dwellings and the larger ones communal units. There are twelve roundhouses here; I'll get a plan for you, and they make a very distinct village. So far not very unusual. The remains of many stone roundhouses can still be found scattered across open heathland, such as Dartmoor. For a long time, they were thought to be ceremonial stone circles but now we know they were houses. All that's left of wooden ones, of course, are the traces of post-holes and so on.
"What made this find unusual is that when we started the dig, we found four larger structures we call wheel houses. These are like a round house but they are divided up by internal walls like the spokes of a wheel. They're about twice the size of a round house and have solid stone walls. Also, round houses are all at ground level while the wheel houses are dug into the ground. There's always been a big argument about whether they were individual or communal units with some saying they were for ceremonial use. Anyway, all the wheel houses were Romano-British which puts them about one hundred or more years later than most round houses. What we found here changed all that.
"Our first thing was that preliminary dating showed the wheel houses were older than the others that have been found. At least two hundred years older and that alone is the subject of somebody's PhD. The other was that they contained a lot of Iron Age weaponry including a perfectly-preserved bronze shield. You should see it, it's beautiful. Completely intact and undamaged. We found swords and spears, even shot for slings. Our working hypothesis is that the wheel houses were barracks or strong points to defend the village. They were on the outside you see while the roundhouses were inside the perimeter they made. If that is correct, this is a perfectly preserved community, a complete defended village, not just the remains of one.
"The discovery of the shield made the television news and alerted the nighthawkers that there was a target worth plundering. The TV people didn’t say where we were but they found us soon enough. We found some partial diggings one morning, none anywhere that mattered, but soon after the dig in one of the round houses was pillaged. Raw Eddie was furious because it was his dig and the nighthawkers had destroyed or stolen all the finds he was relying on to support his thesis."
"What was that about?" Conrad didn't want to interrupt but he was already convinced that there was more going on than a simple theft ring.
"Raw Eddie's? He was convinced that this was a military settlement built to control the area. He thought the wheel houses were for the troops and the round houses for people who grew food and so on to support them. He was showing that the round houses and the wheel houses were contemporary but there were no military finds in the round houses, and few civilian finds in the wheel houses. He was making a good case of it as well until the nighthawkers wrecked his evidence. Next night he said he was going out to guard his remaining digs. We tried to stop him but he must have slipped out. Later that night, we heard screams, terrible screams, and we went to search. When we found him . . ., well, you've seen the condition he was in."
"And they haven't come back yet?"
"Not yet, no."
"If they do, stay out of it." Angel had a mental picture of a handful of teenage students going out as a disorganized mass to try and chase the nighthawker gang and getting the same treatment as Rawlings had received. That led her to reflect upon what the police response was likely to be. "Leave this sort of thing to the professionals."
Guest House, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
“Dinner is at seven. They’ll sound the gong when we have to go to the dining room.”
Angel took out a bottle of pills and washed two down with a glass of water. “This is a guest house? It feels a bit more like a prison.”
“The comparison has been made.” Conrad looked around their room. The television crew had taken most of the rooms in the guest house, leaving Conrad and Angel to share a single room. It was apparent that the landlady assumed they were married although neither of them could think why. Nevertheless, they had a well-established pattern for this; Conrad would sleep in the double bed while Angel made a nest for herself somewhere on the floor where she could riddle anybody who tried to get in. “How’s your stomach? Any problems.”
Angel shook her head. “The inflammation is still there but it’s fading. The ibuprofen helps. I’m down to around 100 milligrams a day now. Have we got room to put the boards up?”
Conrad nodded and produced two small corkboards and a pile of miniature-sized cards. This was the start of the case, the point where he and Angel would throw everything they could think of into the pot and slowly winnow the ideas down. "Shall we start with motive? The apparent cause is the Nighthawkers dealing with somebody who tried to prevent them plundering the site."
"Or was a witness to who they were. That would explain why they tried to kill Eddie. If they just wanted him out the way, they would have slugged him, trussed him up like a chicken and put him somewhere safe. Neither explains why they broke his legs like that. That tells me they wanted to know something. They broke his legs until he told them and when he had, they tried to kill him."
"So he knew something, had either overheard it or seen it and they wanted to know what it was." Conrad wrote out the appropriate card. "That doesn't really work though. If they had caught him watching them, they'd know what he knew. There's a time window issue as well. By working him over on-site, they had left themselves with only a short period to get the information they needed. That means what they wanted was too urgent to take the time to cart him off somewhere else. He saw something he shouldn’t and has evidence of it tucked away. They wanted to know where it was so they could destroy it."
"Or he tried to blackmail them with it. Perhaps he wanted his finds back so he could continue with the work they had compromised." Angel wrote out the card for that. She still lacked Conrad's neat, precise handwriting but her own hand was now legible and tidy.
Conrad took the card and pinned it on the left, the position of greatest probability. "It's the sort of thing that a college youngster would think is a clever idea. Went out with a camera one night and photographed the nighthawkers at work. Then hid the film and when they came back, told them that he'd give the pictures to the police unless they gave him his finds back. He didn’t realize the obvious course of action for them was to get rid of him."
Angel stood looking at the board, holding the tip of her right thumb between her teeth. "There is another aspect to this. Suppose the Nighthawkers are just a blind, a decoy? Somebody wanted Raw Eddie dead for another reason, saw the Nighthawkers had appeared and made it look like they had done this? It's a good bit of misdirection."
"That would mean we haven't any real idea of what the motive would be." Conrad paused. "We could take that a step further. Suppose Raw Eddie was a tool, not an objective. We're getting a sense of how hated these Nighthawkers are by the archeologists. I can see why, they destroy valuable sites without regard for anything that could be learned from them. To people who work in an environment where learning is everything, that would be an ultimate insult. Suppose somebody knew that the Nighthawkers were there, that Raw Eddie was on his own in the same area and killed him so that the Nighthawkers would get the blame?"
Angel nodded slowly. "That could easily work. Very easily. I like the idea that he has something they didn’t want known tucked away and they wanted it. But, framing them for his murder would be a close alternative to that. Now we have the other thing we do know. The fake parents."
"Ah yes, them." Conrad looked at the line of motives on the board. He wished they had one of his full-sized corkboards but they were too large for a place like this. "I can only think of one reason why they would take the risk of getting into his room."
"To kill him." Angel had instantly agreed with Conrad's unspoken deduction. "It would be easy enough once they got in. The traditional pillow over the face would do it. With or without pistol shots although the without would be safer for the killers."
Conrad knew that Angel had killed her father by holding a pillow over his face while firing three pistol shots through it into his head and wondered if the memory had come back to her then. Or if it ever really left her. "That can only mean one thing. They had learned he had survived the attack and were afraid he could identify them if he recovered. So they were going to silence him. That rather implies that they knew that he knew who they were."
"And that means they could also have been members of the dig team." Angel finished the thought off.
"Or the TV crew covering it." Conrad added. "We haven't met any of them yet. That would support either him being attacked to discredit the Nighthawkers or that some of the Nighthawkers were part of one team at the site. Or both."
"Or, it could have been the TV crew trying to boost the ratings of their show." Angel was at her superbly cynical best.
Conrad was saved from replying by the dinner gong sounding. "Ah food. I don’t know about you but I'm hungry."
The dining room had obviously once been the major reception area of a wealthy family's home. It was large enough to contain enough tables to feed a full register of guests but doing so had left the room cramped and the tables a little too close to each other for comfort. The waitresses were having difficulty moving between them in order to serve the guests. Conrad and Angel found their table easily enough; to Angel's relief it was up against one of the walls and she could sit facing the door and with a good view of the room. Conrad seated her and then took the chair opposite.
"Good evening. I'm Kellie. Soup tonight is cream of tomato or cream of chicken. Following that, we have Shepherd’s Pie or Irish stew."
"Is the pie made with real shepherds?" Angel couldn’t resist the hoary old joke.
Kellie smiled a little wearily. "New York. Probably Manhattan?"
"That's very good. Mott Street. How did you know?"
"I'm doing my degree in linguistics at U of L. Your accent is very faint but it's still there."
"And only Americans make the joke about real Shepherds?" Conrad was beginning to enjoy himself.
"Well, there is that, Sir."
Angel shook her head. "I'll have chicken soup and the Irish stew, please."
"Me too." Conrad looked around. There was a large table in the middle of the room that was obviously set aside for the television crew. Sitting at the head was a small, elderly man, bald except for a thin horse-shoe of cropped silver hair. He was waving his arms around as he talked and several times the waitresses had to take sharp evasive action to dodge carelessly-waved arms. Conrad was aware that Kellie was timing her departure to avoid him. "Who is that?"
"Don't you recognize him, Sir? That's Richard Baldwin, the presenter of Archeology in Action. He comes over nice on television, but . . . Anyway, let me get your soup."
Kellie managed to avoid the navigation hazards safely and returned with two bowls of soup and a pepper grinder. "Some pepper, Sir, madam?"
"A moment." Conrad tasted his soup. "Just a little please."
Angel did the same and shook her head. "It's great as it is, thank you."
While stuck in hospital, one of Angel's nurses had been Jewish and she'd brought in a bowl of her grandmother's chicken soup which, she had claimed, was the cure for all known ills and the Jewish equivalent of penicillin. It had of course been carefully checked before reaching Angel. To her surprise, not only was it very good soup, it really had made her feel a lot better. The bowl she had in front of her now wasn't quite as tasty as the soup she'd had in Rome but it was close.
By the time their stews had arrived, disaster had struck. In his gyrations, Baldwin had pushed back hard on his seat, rocking it on its two back legs. In doing so he had banged into the man sitting behind him, causing him to spill hot tomato soup all over his shirt. Baldwin had snarled "mind what you're doing" and then resumed paying attention to his own table only. Kellie and the other waitresses in the room had tried to clean the victim up but there was obviously not much that could be done. Cream of tomato soup was notorious for leaving irreparable stains. Behind them, Baldwin was studiously ignoring their efforts and ostentatiously not attempting to apologize.
"We need to keep away from that one." Angel's remark sounded condemnatory but Conrad knew it wasn't. Her words were simply a statement of intent to avoid somebody who was obviously a disaster area waiting to happen.
Nevertheless, his sense of propriety had been offended by the way Baldwin’s antics had disturbed his enjoyment of a quiet meal with Angel. Having come so close to losing her, he valued every moment they could spend together. Oddly, he didn’t realize how much she felt the same way. So, he succumbed to temptation, making a note to include the lapse in his next confession. “You know, Angel, some mothers should have thrown the baby away and kept the stork.”
Angel was unfamiliar with the euphemisms and stories adults told children and the fact she never used them was one of the reasons why children liked her. This time, that unfamiliarity meant she needed a second or two to realize what Conrad was getting at. Then, she shook her head, setting the long red bangs that framed her face swaying. “That’s not fair Conrad, they don't make people like that anymore. But, just to be on the safe side, he should be castrated anyway.”
There was an explosion of laughter around the dining room and a thunder of applause. Conrad turned brilliant red with embarrassment while Angel stood up and took a bow for them both. Richard Baldwin was furious at being openly ridiculed but during that bow he saw her pistols hanging in their shoulder holsters and decided not to cross swords with the mysterious Chinese woman who had appeared in their midst. It was a sensible resolution and he really should have kept it.
Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"Good morning. I'm Penelope Sexton, the manager of the student team here. We're all from the Archeology Department of the University of Lincolnshire. You are Conrad and Angelique de Llorente?"
"We are. We have our National Identification Cards for you, Miss Sexton." Conrad spoke gravely despite the informal atmosphere of the dig site. He was also hiding his amusement at the knowledge Angel had sorted through her collection of National Identity Cards and picked one more or less at random.
Their host actually flushed pink with embarrassment. "Actually, its Doctor Sexton but everybody calls me Penny, The undergrads call me Sexy Penny."
Angel raised an eyebrow and Penny hastened to explain. "It's a sort of game the undergrads play. Take the normal nickname from somebody's first and then an adjective derived from their family name. I'm a Sexton, so, Sexy Penny. The field archeologist in charge is Phillip Hardy, so he became Hardly Phil. They can be really clever sometimes, but I don't know what they'll come up with for Angelique de Llorente."
"Most people just call me Angel." Angel looked around at the site. "What do we have here and how bad is the Nighthawker problem?"
Penny absent-mindedly twirled a strand of her hair around her finger. "How much do you know about iron age archeology?"
"Absolutely nothing." The answer came from Conrad and Angel is a perfect chorus. Conrad added a further explanation, "We’ve never even been on a site like this before. A friend of ours is involved in the Flavian Amphitheater dig in Rome and she's told us some basics but its best if you assume we know nothing at all and teach us from the ground up?"
Penny smiled at them. To meet people who knew nothing and were happy to admit it was a blessed relief. Although she didn’t know it, she had been the subject of an intensive security check over the last few days and had come up clean. So much so, that the Security Service was thinking of recruiting her. "All right! The standard living unit back then was called a round house. They used walls made either of stone or of wooden posts joined by wattle-and-daub panels and a conical thatched roof. Usually they are somewhere between 15 and 45 feet in diameter, the small ones are single-family dwellings and the larger ones communal units. There are twelve roundhouses here; I'll get a plan for you, and they make a very distinct village. So far not very unusual. The remains of many stone roundhouses can still be found scattered across open heathland, such as Dartmoor. For a long time, they were thought to be ceremonial stone circles but now we know they were houses. All that's left of wooden ones, of course, are the traces of post-holes and so on.
"What made this find unusual is that when we started the dig, we found four larger structures we call wheel houses. These are like a round house but they are divided up by internal walls like the spokes of a wheel. They're about twice the size of a round house and have solid stone walls. Also, round houses are all at ground level while the wheel houses are dug into the ground. There's always been a big argument about whether they were individual or communal units with some saying they were for ceremonial use. Anyway, all the wheel houses were Romano-British which puts them about one hundred or more years later than most round houses. What we found here changed all that.
"Our first thing was that preliminary dating showed the wheel houses were older than the others that have been found. At least two hundred years older and that alone is the subject of somebody's PhD. The other was that they contained a lot of Iron Age weaponry including a perfectly-preserved bronze shield. You should see it, it's beautiful. Completely intact and undamaged. We found swords and spears, even shot for slings. Our working hypothesis is that the wheel houses were barracks or strong points to defend the village. They were on the outside you see while the roundhouses were inside the perimeter they made. If that is correct, this is a perfectly preserved community, a complete defended village, not just the remains of one.
"The discovery of the shield made the television news and alerted the nighthawkers that there was a target worth plundering. The TV people didn’t say where we were but they found us soon enough. We found some partial diggings one morning, none anywhere that mattered, but soon after the dig in one of the round houses was pillaged. Raw Eddie was furious because it was his dig and the nighthawkers had destroyed or stolen all the finds he was relying on to support his thesis."
"What was that about?" Conrad didn't want to interrupt but he was already convinced that there was more going on than a simple theft ring.
"Raw Eddie's? He was convinced that this was a military settlement built to control the area. He thought the wheel houses were for the troops and the round houses for people who grew food and so on to support them. He was showing that the round houses and the wheel houses were contemporary but there were no military finds in the round houses, and few civilian finds in the wheel houses. He was making a good case of it as well until the nighthawkers wrecked his evidence. Next night he said he was going out to guard his remaining digs. We tried to stop him but he must have slipped out. Later that night, we heard screams, terrible screams, and we went to search. When we found him . . ., well, you've seen the condition he was in."
"And they haven't come back yet?"
"Not yet, no."
"If they do, stay out of it." Angel had a mental picture of a handful of teenage students going out as a disorganized mass to try and chase the nighthawker gang and getting the same treatment as Rawlings had received. That led her to reflect upon what the police response was likely to be. "Leave this sort of thing to the professionals."
Guest House, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
“Dinner is at seven. They’ll sound the gong when we have to go to the dining room.”
Angel took out a bottle of pills and washed two down with a glass of water. “This is a guest house? It feels a bit more like a prison.”
“The comparison has been made.” Conrad looked around their room. The television crew had taken most of the rooms in the guest house, leaving Conrad and Angel to share a single room. It was apparent that the landlady assumed they were married although neither of them could think why. Nevertheless, they had a well-established pattern for this; Conrad would sleep in the double bed while Angel made a nest for herself somewhere on the floor where she could riddle anybody who tried to get in. “How’s your stomach? Any problems.”
Angel shook her head. “The inflammation is still there but it’s fading. The ibuprofen helps. I’m down to around 100 milligrams a day now. Have we got room to put the boards up?”
Conrad nodded and produced two small corkboards and a pile of miniature-sized cards. This was the start of the case, the point where he and Angel would throw everything they could think of into the pot and slowly winnow the ideas down. "Shall we start with motive? The apparent cause is the Nighthawkers dealing with somebody who tried to prevent them plundering the site."
"Or was a witness to who they were. That would explain why they tried to kill Eddie. If they just wanted him out the way, they would have slugged him, trussed him up like a chicken and put him somewhere safe. Neither explains why they broke his legs like that. That tells me they wanted to know something. They broke his legs until he told them and when he had, they tried to kill him."
"So he knew something, had either overheard it or seen it and they wanted to know what it was." Conrad wrote out the appropriate card. "That doesn't really work though. If they had caught him watching them, they'd know what he knew. There's a time window issue as well. By working him over on-site, they had left themselves with only a short period to get the information they needed. That means what they wanted was too urgent to take the time to cart him off somewhere else. He saw something he shouldn’t and has evidence of it tucked away. They wanted to know where it was so they could destroy it."
"Or he tried to blackmail them with it. Perhaps he wanted his finds back so he could continue with the work they had compromised." Angel wrote out the card for that. She still lacked Conrad's neat, precise handwriting but her own hand was now legible and tidy.
Conrad took the card and pinned it on the left, the position of greatest probability. "It's the sort of thing that a college youngster would think is a clever idea. Went out with a camera one night and photographed the nighthawkers at work. Then hid the film and when they came back, told them that he'd give the pictures to the police unless they gave him his finds back. He didn’t realize the obvious course of action for them was to get rid of him."
Angel stood looking at the board, holding the tip of her right thumb between her teeth. "There is another aspect to this. Suppose the Nighthawkers are just a blind, a decoy? Somebody wanted Raw Eddie dead for another reason, saw the Nighthawkers had appeared and made it look like they had done this? It's a good bit of misdirection."
"That would mean we haven't any real idea of what the motive would be." Conrad paused. "We could take that a step further. Suppose Raw Eddie was a tool, not an objective. We're getting a sense of how hated these Nighthawkers are by the archeologists. I can see why, they destroy valuable sites without regard for anything that could be learned from them. To people who work in an environment where learning is everything, that would be an ultimate insult. Suppose somebody knew that the Nighthawkers were there, that Raw Eddie was on his own in the same area and killed him so that the Nighthawkers would get the blame?"
Angel nodded slowly. "That could easily work. Very easily. I like the idea that he has something they didn’t want known tucked away and they wanted it. But, framing them for his murder would be a close alternative to that. Now we have the other thing we do know. The fake parents."
"Ah yes, them." Conrad looked at the line of motives on the board. He wished they had one of his full-sized corkboards but they were too large for a place like this. "I can only think of one reason why they would take the risk of getting into his room."
"To kill him." Angel had instantly agreed with Conrad's unspoken deduction. "It would be easy enough once they got in. The traditional pillow over the face would do it. With or without pistol shots although the without would be safer for the killers."
Conrad knew that Angel had killed her father by holding a pillow over his face while firing three pistol shots through it into his head and wondered if the memory had come back to her then. Or if it ever really left her. "That can only mean one thing. They had learned he had survived the attack and were afraid he could identify them if he recovered. So they were going to silence him. That rather implies that they knew that he knew who they were."
"And that means they could also have been members of the dig team." Angel finished the thought off.
"Or the TV crew covering it." Conrad added. "We haven't met any of them yet. That would support either him being attacked to discredit the Nighthawkers or that some of the Nighthawkers were part of one team at the site. Or both."
"Or, it could have been the TV crew trying to boost the ratings of their show." Angel was at her superbly cynical best.
Conrad was saved from replying by the dinner gong sounding. "Ah food. I don’t know about you but I'm hungry."
The dining room had obviously once been the major reception area of a wealthy family's home. It was large enough to contain enough tables to feed a full register of guests but doing so had left the room cramped and the tables a little too close to each other for comfort. The waitresses were having difficulty moving between them in order to serve the guests. Conrad and Angel found their table easily enough; to Angel's relief it was up against one of the walls and she could sit facing the door and with a good view of the room. Conrad seated her and then took the chair opposite.
"Good evening. I'm Kellie. Soup tonight is cream of tomato or cream of chicken. Following that, we have Shepherd’s Pie or Irish stew."
"Is the pie made with real shepherds?" Angel couldn’t resist the hoary old joke.
Kellie smiled a little wearily. "New York. Probably Manhattan?"
"That's very good. Mott Street. How did you know?"
"I'm doing my degree in linguistics at U of L. Your accent is very faint but it's still there."
"And only Americans make the joke about real Shepherds?" Conrad was beginning to enjoy himself.
"Well, there is that, Sir."
Angel shook her head. "I'll have chicken soup and the Irish stew, please."
"Me too." Conrad looked around. There was a large table in the middle of the room that was obviously set aside for the television crew. Sitting at the head was a small, elderly man, bald except for a thin horse-shoe of cropped silver hair. He was waving his arms around as he talked and several times the waitresses had to take sharp evasive action to dodge carelessly-waved arms. Conrad was aware that Kellie was timing her departure to avoid him. "Who is that?"
"Don't you recognize him, Sir? That's Richard Baldwin, the presenter of Archeology in Action. He comes over nice on television, but . . . Anyway, let me get your soup."
Kellie managed to avoid the navigation hazards safely and returned with two bowls of soup and a pepper grinder. "Some pepper, Sir, madam?"
"A moment." Conrad tasted his soup. "Just a little please."
Angel did the same and shook her head. "It's great as it is, thank you."
While stuck in hospital, one of Angel's nurses had been Jewish and she'd brought in a bowl of her grandmother's chicken soup which, she had claimed, was the cure for all known ills and the Jewish equivalent of penicillin. It had of course been carefully checked before reaching Angel. To her surprise, not only was it very good soup, it really had made her feel a lot better. The bowl she had in front of her now wasn't quite as tasty as the soup she'd had in Rome but it was close.
By the time their stews had arrived, disaster had struck. In his gyrations, Baldwin had pushed back hard on his seat, rocking it on its two back legs. In doing so he had banged into the man sitting behind him, causing him to spill hot tomato soup all over his shirt. Baldwin had snarled "mind what you're doing" and then resumed paying attention to his own table only. Kellie and the other waitresses in the room had tried to clean the victim up but there was obviously not much that could be done. Cream of tomato soup was notorious for leaving irreparable stains. Behind them, Baldwin was studiously ignoring their efforts and ostentatiously not attempting to apologize.
"We need to keep away from that one." Angel's remark sounded condemnatory but Conrad knew it wasn't. Her words were simply a statement of intent to avoid somebody who was obviously a disaster area waiting to happen.
Nevertheless, his sense of propriety had been offended by the way Baldwin’s antics had disturbed his enjoyment of a quiet meal with Angel. Having come so close to losing her, he valued every moment they could spend together. Oddly, he didn’t realize how much she felt the same way. So, he succumbed to temptation, making a note to include the lapse in his next confession. “You know, Angel, some mothers should have thrown the baby away and kept the stork.”
Angel was unfamiliar with the euphemisms and stories adults told children and the fact she never used them was one of the reasons why children liked her. This time, that unfamiliarity meant she needed a second or two to realize what Conrad was getting at. Then, she shook her head, setting the long red bangs that framed her face swaying. “That’s not fair Conrad, they don't make people like that anymore. But, just to be on the safe side, he should be castrated anyway.”
There was an explosion of laughter around the dining room and a thunder of applause. Conrad turned brilliant red with embarrassment while Angel stood up and took a bow for them both. Richard Baldwin was furious at being openly ridiculed but during that bow he saw her pistols hanging in their shoulder holsters and decided not to cross swords with the mysterious Chinese woman who had appeared in their midst. It was a sensible resolution and he really should have kept it.
Re: 2008 - Eye of the Nighthawker
Chapter Three
Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"Ohh, thaar be a good trench." Phillip Hardy, the field archeologist in charge looked down at Angel's work with appreciation for a job well done. Standing beside the six-foot by three-foot hole Angel had dug, senior archeologist Prema Mishra, known to the students as Misty Prema, watched him with pride as he approved the work. Angel had been a good student, carefully following her instructions while clearing away the six-foot thick layer of packed sediment soil to expose the original ground layer. The last foot had been removed in thin layers to ensure that the finds area wasn't improperly disturbed. It was a neat excavation that formed a first-class start to investigating a new area. Hardy, though, was a little disturbed by the dimensions of the hole. It is a bit small but it can always be extended later, he thought. It's a bit familiar but I can't quite think why.
"May I coom daarn into ye trench, Ahngel?"
"Lesson, Angel. Always ask for permission before entering another digger's trench." Prema looked at the trench. "You'd better come out first; it’s a bit small for the two of you.
Angel had dug a small step for herself at one end, one that meant she could climb in and out without straining her abdominal muscles. Once out, she sat on the grass and gulped down some water from one of the bottles that were in a cool-box. In the process, she swallowed another pair of ibuprofen anti-inflammatory tablets.
"Aaar ye all raaht, Ahngel?" Hardy had caught the action and was concerned. Despite being built a bit like a bear, he was an extraordinarily gentle and kindly man. The thought that one of his students might be ill worried him greatly. So much so that he was ready to walk over to the local pub more than a mile away and get her a pint of best British bitter beer, something he regarded as a cure for all known ailments as well as a sovereign thinking aid for solving particularly knotty problems.
"Yes, thank you. I got shot a year or so back and it still hurts. Nothing to worry about." There had been a long discussion about whether Conrad and Angel should go into the dig undercover or make an overt investigation. They'd settled on the latter although Angel was taking the opportunity to do the hard physical work that would help get her back into shape. She lifted up her shirt and showed them the white circular scar where John Mason's bullet had torn into her and the deep red inflammation that surrounded it. That was the residue of the ricin poisoning that had come within a hair's breadth of killing her. The brilliant red was fading slowly as her body repaired the damage but the residual infection was enough to cause pain. "Prema tells me we're down to the archeology level now."
"Aaar. See the line thar? Yellow one sade and dark t'othaa? Thaart tells us of a waal heah once. The staahn has been robbed aht but the shaadow of foundation tranch be still heah.”
“Uhh, Doctor Hardy, I don’t think that’s quite right. From the angle, I think this was an internal wall and it was taken down by the residents for some reason. They probably used the stone for a new wall in the same building.”
“Ye coowd be raht, Prema.” Hardy looked at the shadow in the ground more carefully. “Ye coowd vera waal be raht an’all.”
“Is there a difference between ‘robbed out’ and just moved around?” Angel, to her own great surprise, was beginning to be interested in archeology.
Hardy waved to Prema, inviting her to answer. It was, of course, a test to see if she could give a good answer to a non-specialist.
“When we say a structure has been robbed out, what we mean is that the building materials have been taken away by another builder and used for his own project. Very common thing to happen since it saves the time taken to trim and shape the stones. When everything is done by hand using simple tools, that’s a major advantage. Here, though, I think they stopped building an internal wall, took out the work they’d done and use the stones for the walls.”
“Tha prahblem is this waal is too smahl for ah wheel-haas. Size of a rahnd-haas but it has stahn waals. Look lahk we haave an intamediaht betwin them heah. Major Fahnd. Natioahl importance.” Hardy paused for a minute. “Ye nahtis samthin? This be in ah dahrect lahn betwin the two wheel-haases.”
He took his pad and clipboard and started to sketch quickly. Angel noticed that despite his speed and casual approach, the drawing that emerged was exactly correct and put each of the buildings in the right place. She made a private bet to herself that if she measured the real spacing and scaled it out, any errors he had made would be measured in inches. The four wheel-houses formed a isosceles trapezoid surrounding the round-houses. The newly-discovered mini-wheelhouse was almost, but not quite half way along the longest side of the trapezium. She reminded herself that Hardy, despite his appearance and Cornish accent was exceptionally good at his job. That was when something clicked in her mind.
"We believe that the wheel-houses were built to defend the round-houses, right? Well, wheel-houses spaced out like that wouldn't defend anything. Attackers would simply go between them. If we join them with a wall though, that makes all the difference. You want to stop somebody, you got to have a wall. It wouldn't have to be high, waist-height would do it."
"Thaar be nah evidahnce for ye wall. Naht yet."
"I'm a gun-chick, not an archeologist but I do know defending things. Especially people. Why not put a trench across one of these gaps and see what we find."
"There is another thing." Prema was also looking at the plan. She also appreciated how accurate the 'sketch' was. "This small wheel-house isn't in the middle. Nearly, but not quite. Suppose there was another one beside it with a gap between them? A gatehouse."
"Nah gaytes bahk then, Prema."
"Wouldn’t need one." Angel visualized the settlement coming under attack. "Get a cart in there, turn it on its side and the entry is blocked. They had carts back then didn’t they? By the way, are there any roads around here?"
"Naht rahds, Naht as ye'd knaw thahm. Trahks. Ah'll cahll Mahd Tahm over. Eee as tha aerials."
Thomas Madsen, aka Mad Tom, took five minutes to come over and twenty minutes to explain how the tracks and pathways in the area could be located by the changes they had made to the landscape. How the curve of a wood or the alignment of fields marked where a path or track had been once or where cuts had been made to allow people to pass through difficult areas. He had already identified one such track that led through the fields adjacent to the long arm of the trapezoid made by the wheel houses. Angel was interested to see that it seemed to end right in from of where she, Hardy and Prema were standing. "This is looking more and more like a gatehouse isn’t it?"
"Aaar, thaart it be." Hardy thought for a second. "Raaht. We'll continue this this traanch, dig another at raaht angles to it. Thaart should tahk us across both wheel-haases of tha gaht. Anotha 'cross the trahk there see if we carn fahnd thaart. Fahnally wan more acraas the waahl Ahngel thinks is dahn thaa."
"We're on very thin evidence right now, but if we're right we've just found an iron-age stone castle. This is huge." Prema looked around the site. "What does the geophysics have to say?"
"Not much." Mad Tom had been frustrated by the limited and inconclusive results of the geophysical survey. "Everything is buried too deep in this clay."
"How did that happen?" Angel looked at the trench she had dug. She couldn’t see any evidence of flooding.
"Look at the soil ye dug through to get dahn. Whaart do ye see?"
"Just mud. Clay isn't it."
"Yaa, clay. How many layers?"
Angel looked hard. "None I can see."
"So, all thaart came dahn in one go. Clay is alluvial. So it came dahn as a flood. Six feet, a bahd, baahd flood."
"Angel, once the river folded around this site. In fact, this site was the neck of a crescent-shaped bend. One day, probably after heavy rain, the river broke through the neck and flooded the site. A whole mass of clay and other alluvial muds came down and covered everything. It was probably a major disaster, it wouldn’t surprise me if we found a lot of bodies around here. The survivors were those who abandoned everything and ran while they still had time. Then, the clay settled and sealed everything off. That's why all the finds are so well preserved, the settled clay sealed them off. A few centuries later the river changed course again and it’s a mile or two over that way, by the town. By then, this place was forgotten." Mad Tom looked around at the site. Prema was already measuring off the markers for the new trenches.
"And thaarts why we have to keep them bluidy nahtawkers out of 'ere." Hardy glowered at the surrounding countryside. "Thaar be real 'istry 'ere."
Central Administration Hut, Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
“This is assuming that all the guesses we made over at the new dig are correct.” Mad Tom looked at the model proudly. It had taken him hours and showed the four main wheelhouses and the two smaller ones joined by walls, surrounding the roundhouses inside. To Conrad’s untutored eye, it looked like the fortresses he’d seen hundreds of years earlier in Spain and Italy. Mad Tom had also drawn a view of the original structure as it would have been seen by a traveler approaching along the hypothetical track leading to the proposed gate-house. The four low towers in the picture had an undeniable air of menace about them. If all their guesses were right, this was indeed an iron-age version of a stone castle, probably the first to be built in Britain or even in Europe. Also, the only one to be found, so far. “Need your advice here, Angel. How high should the wall be?”
“How high are those wheel-houses?”
“About five feet above ground, three below but probably with a step inside. Remember people back then were a lot smaller than they are now.” Prema was studying dietetics as one of her supporting courses. She wasn’t aware of just how true that comment was, nor that both Conrad and Angel had undeniable evidence of the fact. Even Achillea, probably the most physically powerful of the older long-lived, was only five foot five. At five foot seven, Angel was unusually tall by their standards. At five foot ten, Conrad towered over them. Prema had never met Loki although she would have remembered him if she had. At six foot eight, he was a giant by the standards of his time, abnormally tall even by 2007 standards.
“Then assume the wall is about four feet? That will be hard for people that size to get over quickly. Personally, I’d try and put a ditch outside and a step inside.” Angel had never been any kind of soldier but in her early days after escaping from prison, she had been assigned to provide protection for villages that looked to the Triads for support against bandits. That seemed to her to be a better model for what would have been happening here than regular warfare. Suddenly an idea clicked into her mind and she decided she needed to make some telephone calls. "Just how important is this place, really?"
"Prema?" Hardy gave her the chance to make her assessment of the situation.
"It all depends on whether we find those walls. If we do, then this is a world heritage site. People will be coming here and writing books about what happened. If not, then it's an unusual site but regional importance at best. It's so well preserved though, there'll be lots of relics. If we're not very careful, the whole site could be looted and destroyed. Remember what happened the last time we found some roundhouses Phil?"
"Aaar. Noice saht thaart was. Then bluidy nahtawkers turned up with bahkhoes and ripped it ahl apaht. Destroyed everythin'. Ahl fah a few bluidy pahnds."
Angel nodded. That was more or less what she had thought. "Is it worth the University paying for a few armed guards here? The police will be gone tomorrow or the day after at the latest."
"Saht's warth protectin but University harsn't gaht money loike thaart."
Angel's mouth twitched. "Payment doesn’t have to be in cash. I'll see if I can make a deal. Who do I talk to and what's his telephone number?"
"Angel, I've been looking at this situation." Conrad had waited politely while the archeological talk had continued. While Angel had been digging at the site, he had been collating all the evidence and examining his cork-boards. One part of the Central Administration Hut had been set aside for his use and for the investigation of the attack on Raw Eddie. It was kept locked; he and Angel had the only keys. "These nighthawkers have got to be living somewhere and they'll have too much equipment to be camping out. Also, they have to be mobile. So, I thought camper vans."
"Makes sense."
"Well, it occurred to me that the police here don’t like vans like that parked over the countryside. The last thing the nighthawkers want is to attract attention so they'll go to one of the places that specializes in accommodating those vans. As it happens, there's one about six miles from here." Conrad had almost left to go there himself before he had stopped to tell Angel and let her accompany him. The truth was, he was so used to her constant presence and the protection it provided that he had almost taken it for granted that she would be there. Almost, but not quite. After Rome, he would never take her for granted again.
"We'd better go and have a look around then. And speak politely to a few people." Angel's definition of 'speaking politely' when she was in her business mode was leaving them alive afterwards. "First, I have a couple of calls to make. Got that number, Phil?"
She disappeared into the investigation room for a few minutes, then came out in a marked hurry. "Phil, the Bursar wants to talk with you. Now. Needs to know just how potentially important this site is."
Conrad looked at her with an eyebrow raised. She grinned and gave him a thumb's up sign. Then she vanished back into the room.
Ten minutes later, she came out. "All right, the University has provisionally agreed to hire a team from Dragon Security Consultants to look after this place - and you of course. I've contacted Dragon and they're readying a suitable team to come up. Deal will be finally agreed when and if we find the walls we've hypothesized."
"I can help you there." Penny had come running in from the dig area. "We've found the wall between the small and large wheelhouse, just where Tom and Angel said it would be. We seem to have both an earth bank and a stone structure. We can make sense of that later. Also, there are traces of a ditch along the outside. We've got a bit of solid evidence now, and it looks like we don’t just have a castle, we have a moated castle. "
"Phil, you'd better call that in to the Bursar. He'll need to get approval of course but if he gives the word, I'll have the Dragon team up here tomorrow morning. Let me know what is happening when Conrad and I get back from the trailer park."
As they left, Conrad leaned over to Angel so they wouldn’t be overheard. "Let me guess. Scholarships?"
"Twelve, one student for one year each, renewable at their discretion. That could be three students for four years for example. All this goes to show this is a really important find. I could hear the Bursar almost dancing around with the University checkbook in hand. Apparently they were considering closing the dig down because the risk to the students was too great. Offering us those scholarships is a perfect way out for them. Even better, since the scholarships will be awarded to foreign students, the University will be able to claim them against tax." Angel had a calculating look in her eyes that made Conrad guess she was already working out how to use those scholarships to best advantage.
"You're not planning to steal the finds yourself are you?" Conrad was only half-joking
"Of course not." Angel sounded indignant although she knew that Conrad had been teasing her. "As you keep pointing out, I'm management now and I've got people who do that sort of thing for me. Anyway, why go to the trouble of stealing ancient artifacts when we can make them ourselves? Khrungthep House has been making antiques to sell to the tourists for decades now. It's one of their bigger earners."
"I don't think you had better tell our friends here that." Conrad was trying to stop laughing. The truth was that every citizen of Bangkok had a good laugh at the sight of tourists spending their money on forged antiques. What surprised him was that Angel was suddenly looking very thoughtful.
"Now, that has possibilities," she said quietly to herself.
Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"Ohh, thaar be a good trench." Phillip Hardy, the field archeologist in charge looked down at Angel's work with appreciation for a job well done. Standing beside the six-foot by three-foot hole Angel had dug, senior archeologist Prema Mishra, known to the students as Misty Prema, watched him with pride as he approved the work. Angel had been a good student, carefully following her instructions while clearing away the six-foot thick layer of packed sediment soil to expose the original ground layer. The last foot had been removed in thin layers to ensure that the finds area wasn't improperly disturbed. It was a neat excavation that formed a first-class start to investigating a new area. Hardy, though, was a little disturbed by the dimensions of the hole. It is a bit small but it can always be extended later, he thought. It's a bit familiar but I can't quite think why.
"May I coom daarn into ye trench, Ahngel?"
"Lesson, Angel. Always ask for permission before entering another digger's trench." Prema looked at the trench. "You'd better come out first; it’s a bit small for the two of you.
Angel had dug a small step for herself at one end, one that meant she could climb in and out without straining her abdominal muscles. Once out, she sat on the grass and gulped down some water from one of the bottles that were in a cool-box. In the process, she swallowed another pair of ibuprofen anti-inflammatory tablets.
"Aaar ye all raaht, Ahngel?" Hardy had caught the action and was concerned. Despite being built a bit like a bear, he was an extraordinarily gentle and kindly man. The thought that one of his students might be ill worried him greatly. So much so that he was ready to walk over to the local pub more than a mile away and get her a pint of best British bitter beer, something he regarded as a cure for all known ailments as well as a sovereign thinking aid for solving particularly knotty problems.
"Yes, thank you. I got shot a year or so back and it still hurts. Nothing to worry about." There had been a long discussion about whether Conrad and Angel should go into the dig undercover or make an overt investigation. They'd settled on the latter although Angel was taking the opportunity to do the hard physical work that would help get her back into shape. She lifted up her shirt and showed them the white circular scar where John Mason's bullet had torn into her and the deep red inflammation that surrounded it. That was the residue of the ricin poisoning that had come within a hair's breadth of killing her. The brilliant red was fading slowly as her body repaired the damage but the residual infection was enough to cause pain. "Prema tells me we're down to the archeology level now."
"Aaar. See the line thar? Yellow one sade and dark t'othaa? Thaart tells us of a waal heah once. The staahn has been robbed aht but the shaadow of foundation tranch be still heah.”
“Uhh, Doctor Hardy, I don’t think that’s quite right. From the angle, I think this was an internal wall and it was taken down by the residents for some reason. They probably used the stone for a new wall in the same building.”
“Ye coowd be raht, Prema.” Hardy looked at the shadow in the ground more carefully. “Ye coowd vera waal be raht an’all.”
“Is there a difference between ‘robbed out’ and just moved around?” Angel, to her own great surprise, was beginning to be interested in archeology.
Hardy waved to Prema, inviting her to answer. It was, of course, a test to see if she could give a good answer to a non-specialist.
“When we say a structure has been robbed out, what we mean is that the building materials have been taken away by another builder and used for his own project. Very common thing to happen since it saves the time taken to trim and shape the stones. When everything is done by hand using simple tools, that’s a major advantage. Here, though, I think they stopped building an internal wall, took out the work they’d done and use the stones for the walls.”
“Tha prahblem is this waal is too smahl for ah wheel-haas. Size of a rahnd-haas but it has stahn waals. Look lahk we haave an intamediaht betwin them heah. Major Fahnd. Natioahl importance.” Hardy paused for a minute. “Ye nahtis samthin? This be in ah dahrect lahn betwin the two wheel-haases.”
He took his pad and clipboard and started to sketch quickly. Angel noticed that despite his speed and casual approach, the drawing that emerged was exactly correct and put each of the buildings in the right place. She made a private bet to herself that if she measured the real spacing and scaled it out, any errors he had made would be measured in inches. The four wheel-houses formed a isosceles trapezoid surrounding the round-houses. The newly-discovered mini-wheelhouse was almost, but not quite half way along the longest side of the trapezium. She reminded herself that Hardy, despite his appearance and Cornish accent was exceptionally good at his job. That was when something clicked in her mind.
"We believe that the wheel-houses were built to defend the round-houses, right? Well, wheel-houses spaced out like that wouldn't defend anything. Attackers would simply go between them. If we join them with a wall though, that makes all the difference. You want to stop somebody, you got to have a wall. It wouldn't have to be high, waist-height would do it."
"Thaar be nah evidahnce for ye wall. Naht yet."
"I'm a gun-chick, not an archeologist but I do know defending things. Especially people. Why not put a trench across one of these gaps and see what we find."
"There is another thing." Prema was also looking at the plan. She also appreciated how accurate the 'sketch' was. "This small wheel-house isn't in the middle. Nearly, but not quite. Suppose there was another one beside it with a gap between them? A gatehouse."
"Nah gaytes bahk then, Prema."
"Wouldn’t need one." Angel visualized the settlement coming under attack. "Get a cart in there, turn it on its side and the entry is blocked. They had carts back then didn’t they? By the way, are there any roads around here?"
"Naht rahds, Naht as ye'd knaw thahm. Trahks. Ah'll cahll Mahd Tahm over. Eee as tha aerials."
Thomas Madsen, aka Mad Tom, took five minutes to come over and twenty minutes to explain how the tracks and pathways in the area could be located by the changes they had made to the landscape. How the curve of a wood or the alignment of fields marked where a path or track had been once or where cuts had been made to allow people to pass through difficult areas. He had already identified one such track that led through the fields adjacent to the long arm of the trapezoid made by the wheel houses. Angel was interested to see that it seemed to end right in from of where she, Hardy and Prema were standing. "This is looking more and more like a gatehouse isn’t it?"
"Aaar, thaart it be." Hardy thought for a second. "Raaht. We'll continue this this traanch, dig another at raaht angles to it. Thaart should tahk us across both wheel-haases of tha gaht. Anotha 'cross the trahk there see if we carn fahnd thaart. Fahnally wan more acraas the waahl Ahngel thinks is dahn thaa."
"We're on very thin evidence right now, but if we're right we've just found an iron-age stone castle. This is huge." Prema looked around the site. "What does the geophysics have to say?"
"Not much." Mad Tom had been frustrated by the limited and inconclusive results of the geophysical survey. "Everything is buried too deep in this clay."
"How did that happen?" Angel looked at the trench she had dug. She couldn’t see any evidence of flooding.
"Look at the soil ye dug through to get dahn. Whaart do ye see?"
"Just mud. Clay isn't it."
"Yaa, clay. How many layers?"
Angel looked hard. "None I can see."
"So, all thaart came dahn in one go. Clay is alluvial. So it came dahn as a flood. Six feet, a bahd, baahd flood."
"Angel, once the river folded around this site. In fact, this site was the neck of a crescent-shaped bend. One day, probably after heavy rain, the river broke through the neck and flooded the site. A whole mass of clay and other alluvial muds came down and covered everything. It was probably a major disaster, it wouldn’t surprise me if we found a lot of bodies around here. The survivors were those who abandoned everything and ran while they still had time. Then, the clay settled and sealed everything off. That's why all the finds are so well preserved, the settled clay sealed them off. A few centuries later the river changed course again and it’s a mile or two over that way, by the town. By then, this place was forgotten." Mad Tom looked around at the site. Prema was already measuring off the markers for the new trenches.
"And thaarts why we have to keep them bluidy nahtawkers out of 'ere." Hardy glowered at the surrounding countryside. "Thaar be real 'istry 'ere."
Central Administration Hut, Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
“This is assuming that all the guesses we made over at the new dig are correct.” Mad Tom looked at the model proudly. It had taken him hours and showed the four main wheelhouses and the two smaller ones joined by walls, surrounding the roundhouses inside. To Conrad’s untutored eye, it looked like the fortresses he’d seen hundreds of years earlier in Spain and Italy. Mad Tom had also drawn a view of the original structure as it would have been seen by a traveler approaching along the hypothetical track leading to the proposed gate-house. The four low towers in the picture had an undeniable air of menace about them. If all their guesses were right, this was indeed an iron-age version of a stone castle, probably the first to be built in Britain or even in Europe. Also, the only one to be found, so far. “Need your advice here, Angel. How high should the wall be?”
“How high are those wheel-houses?”
“About five feet above ground, three below but probably with a step inside. Remember people back then were a lot smaller than they are now.” Prema was studying dietetics as one of her supporting courses. She wasn’t aware of just how true that comment was, nor that both Conrad and Angel had undeniable evidence of the fact. Even Achillea, probably the most physically powerful of the older long-lived, was only five foot five. At five foot seven, Angel was unusually tall by their standards. At five foot ten, Conrad towered over them. Prema had never met Loki although she would have remembered him if she had. At six foot eight, he was a giant by the standards of his time, abnormally tall even by 2007 standards.
“Then assume the wall is about four feet? That will be hard for people that size to get over quickly. Personally, I’d try and put a ditch outside and a step inside.” Angel had never been any kind of soldier but in her early days after escaping from prison, she had been assigned to provide protection for villages that looked to the Triads for support against bandits. That seemed to her to be a better model for what would have been happening here than regular warfare. Suddenly an idea clicked into her mind and she decided she needed to make some telephone calls. "Just how important is this place, really?"
"Prema?" Hardy gave her the chance to make her assessment of the situation.
"It all depends on whether we find those walls. If we do, then this is a world heritage site. People will be coming here and writing books about what happened. If not, then it's an unusual site but regional importance at best. It's so well preserved though, there'll be lots of relics. If we're not very careful, the whole site could be looted and destroyed. Remember what happened the last time we found some roundhouses Phil?"
"Aaar. Noice saht thaart was. Then bluidy nahtawkers turned up with bahkhoes and ripped it ahl apaht. Destroyed everythin'. Ahl fah a few bluidy pahnds."
Angel nodded. That was more or less what she had thought. "Is it worth the University paying for a few armed guards here? The police will be gone tomorrow or the day after at the latest."
"Saht's warth protectin but University harsn't gaht money loike thaart."
Angel's mouth twitched. "Payment doesn’t have to be in cash. I'll see if I can make a deal. Who do I talk to and what's his telephone number?"
"Angel, I've been looking at this situation." Conrad had waited politely while the archeological talk had continued. While Angel had been digging at the site, he had been collating all the evidence and examining his cork-boards. One part of the Central Administration Hut had been set aside for his use and for the investigation of the attack on Raw Eddie. It was kept locked; he and Angel had the only keys. "These nighthawkers have got to be living somewhere and they'll have too much equipment to be camping out. Also, they have to be mobile. So, I thought camper vans."
"Makes sense."
"Well, it occurred to me that the police here don’t like vans like that parked over the countryside. The last thing the nighthawkers want is to attract attention so they'll go to one of the places that specializes in accommodating those vans. As it happens, there's one about six miles from here." Conrad had almost left to go there himself before he had stopped to tell Angel and let her accompany him. The truth was, he was so used to her constant presence and the protection it provided that he had almost taken it for granted that she would be there. Almost, but not quite. After Rome, he would never take her for granted again.
"We'd better go and have a look around then. And speak politely to a few people." Angel's definition of 'speaking politely' when she was in her business mode was leaving them alive afterwards. "First, I have a couple of calls to make. Got that number, Phil?"
She disappeared into the investigation room for a few minutes, then came out in a marked hurry. "Phil, the Bursar wants to talk with you. Now. Needs to know just how potentially important this site is."
Conrad looked at her with an eyebrow raised. She grinned and gave him a thumb's up sign. Then she vanished back into the room.
Ten minutes later, she came out. "All right, the University has provisionally agreed to hire a team from Dragon Security Consultants to look after this place - and you of course. I've contacted Dragon and they're readying a suitable team to come up. Deal will be finally agreed when and if we find the walls we've hypothesized."
"I can help you there." Penny had come running in from the dig area. "We've found the wall between the small and large wheelhouse, just where Tom and Angel said it would be. We seem to have both an earth bank and a stone structure. We can make sense of that later. Also, there are traces of a ditch along the outside. We've got a bit of solid evidence now, and it looks like we don’t just have a castle, we have a moated castle. "
"Phil, you'd better call that in to the Bursar. He'll need to get approval of course but if he gives the word, I'll have the Dragon team up here tomorrow morning. Let me know what is happening when Conrad and I get back from the trailer park."
As they left, Conrad leaned over to Angel so they wouldn’t be overheard. "Let me guess. Scholarships?"
"Twelve, one student for one year each, renewable at their discretion. That could be three students for four years for example. All this goes to show this is a really important find. I could hear the Bursar almost dancing around with the University checkbook in hand. Apparently they were considering closing the dig down because the risk to the students was too great. Offering us those scholarships is a perfect way out for them. Even better, since the scholarships will be awarded to foreign students, the University will be able to claim them against tax." Angel had a calculating look in her eyes that made Conrad guess she was already working out how to use those scholarships to best advantage.
"You're not planning to steal the finds yourself are you?" Conrad was only half-joking
"Of course not." Angel sounded indignant although she knew that Conrad had been teasing her. "As you keep pointing out, I'm management now and I've got people who do that sort of thing for me. Anyway, why go to the trouble of stealing ancient artifacts when we can make them ourselves? Khrungthep House has been making antiques to sell to the tourists for decades now. It's one of their bigger earners."
"I don't think you had better tell our friends here that." Conrad was trying to stop laughing. The truth was that every citizen of Bangkok had a good laugh at the sight of tourists spending their money on forged antiques. What surprised him was that Angel was suddenly looking very thoughtful.
"Now, that has possibilities," she said quietly to herself.
Re: 2008 - Eye of the Nighthawker
Chapter Four
The Traveler's Rest Camping Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"I told you those Nighthawkers would be nothing but trouble. You should never have let them in here." Margaret Porter snarled the words at her husband. The immediate cause of her distress was the sight of a police car making its way across the camping site towards the managerial offices. There was no question of this being a friendly or routine visit. The car had all its lights on and its headlights were strobing. Compared with the impressive display, the sound of its siren was a mere additional detail.
"We didn't have much of a choice, did we? They weren't going to take no for an answer and if we'd tried to give them one, the bank would have been here next month to foreclose." Kevin Porter was merely speaking the truth. The mobile caravan site had never prospered, and the bank was beginning to ask pointed questions about when they were likely to see some repayments on the loans they had extended. Questions that had now included the almost-explicit addition "like immediately, or else". The money the column of nine camper trucks had brought in had fended off that threat for a month or two at least. Fending off disaster for a month or two at a time had become a familiar way of life. "Anyway, we haven't any proof they are Nighthawkers."
"Only because you never looked for any." Margaret Porter watched the police car closing in and surreptitiously opened a couple of buttons on her blouse. She reasoned that showing some extra cleavage couldn’t hurt. Then she cursed quietly. The car had stopped a few yards away and a woman got out of the driving seat. Damn, now it would take a miracle for a little extra cleavage to do any good.
The situation was confusing her. The police car had two occupants, a man and a woman, both in civilian clothing. Margaret assumed that they were a pair of detectives but she couldn't work out which was the one in charge. Usually it was painfully obvious who was the Detective Inspector and who the Detective Sergeant. This time, it wasn't so simple. Another thing was that the police woman was Chinese. Half -Chinese Margaret amended She's a bit bigger and more heavily-built than full-blooded Chinese. And she doesn't look like a cop, she walks differently and there's open menace in the way she looks at us. More like a gangster than a police officer. The other one, the police man, he's more like a cop but there's something different about him as well. I don’t like this, don’t like it at all. Why do I get the feeling we've stepped into something that could drown us in crap?
"Good morning, Sir, Madam. Are you the managers here?" It was the man that spoke, causing Margaret to assume he was the one in charge.
"I am." Margaret and her husband had answered simultaneously, something that caused the man to smile slightly. Margaret didn't see why he was amused; she was angry at her husband for talking over her. Yet it was the police woman who responded and when she did so, her voice crackled with authority. It also lacked any semblance of sympathy or compassion.
"I am Inspector Angelique de Llorente from the Thames Valley Police, assigned here on direct authority from the Home Secretary. This is my associate, Conrad. I want to see your registration books. Now."
"Have you got a warrant?" Kevin Porter asked the question with a level of aggression in his voice that made Margaret Porter wonder why she had ever married him. The cold, pitiless gaze in Inspector de Llorente's eyes gave her the idea that she might not be married to him much longer and she wondered if being a widow would allow her to get out from under all the debts the ill-starred caravan park business had loaded her family with.
"As a matter of fact we have." The policeman Inspector de Llorente had called 'Conrad' pulled a search-and-seizure warrant out from his pocket. Actually, it was Angel who had stopped at the Magistrate's Court and collected one. In doing so, Conrad had noted that she was beginning to act like a police officer although whether that was actually her adapting to her position or simply mimicking the behavior around her was harder to guess. It really didn’t matter since he would be doing most of the questioning. It was just that, like the headlights display on the way in, the game they were playing had only just started. He handed the warrant over to Margaret who read it carefully.
"Of course, officers. If you will just excuse me, I'll go and get them."
"If you don't mind, ma'am, I'll go with you." Conrad had his usual soft, mild manner in place and it reassured Margaret greatly. She found the idea of getting as far away as possible from the Detective Inspector congenial. As far as she was concerned, if anybody had to deal with that she-demon, her husband was welcome to the job.
In what passed for the administration office, Margaret pulled down the registration book from the shelf and put it on the desk. "If you'd like to take a seat, officer, all our bookings are in there. Our accounts are in different books; I can get you those as well. If you have any questions, just ask me."
There was a tiny emphasis on the word 'me' that made Conrad smile gently. "Thank you, that would be most helpful. Now, you are?"
"Margaret Porter."
"And you and your husband run this business? By the way, I'm not a police officer, just a civilian consultant. Just call me Conrad."
Margaret relaxed a little more, relieved that she wasn't dealing with a sworn officer but a civilian assistant. That explains the attitude of Inspector de Llorente. She's probably offended at being asked to work with a civilian. "Yeah, we run this place for what it is worth."
"Why do I get the feeling you actually run the place?" Conrad asked the question sympathetically and with an obvious glimmer of humor.
Margaret relaxed still further. "Well, I do the books and all the paperwork. And keep the bank at bay, yeah. Kevin looks after the site, does most of the repairs and maintenance. To be fair, he's good at it. We save a lot by not having to bring in tradespeople to do the routine work. He also socializes with the guests when we have any. Which means he spends the money we saved by doing our own maintenance on buying beer."
"Business not good then." Once more, Conrad had asked the right question, one that turned him from an interviewer into a confidante.
"I wish it reached the level of not good." Margaret sounded bitter. "Look, don't get me wrong when I said Kev spends the money we saved on beer. He does, but it wouldn’t make any difference if he didn’t. This place was a flop right from the start. At first, we kept believing it would get better, but it never did. We were too late you see. Ten, twenty years earlier, when a week or two in a caravan was a nearest thing to a luxury holiday people could afford, caravan sites like this made money hand over fist. Now, all these places are empty and didn't we just come in as the caravan site business collapsed? First year or two, we had a handful of guests but they weren't big spenders to start with and quite a few of them ran out without paying their bills. I'd like to see them try that on a cruise ship or in a posh hotel."
"I know what you mean. We get inquiries from foreign hotels now and then on guests who have skipped out." That was quite true; the various police divisions in Britain did get such inquiries from foreign police forces about tourists who believed that leaving a country unexpectedly relieved them from the responsibility of paying their hotel bills. There were one or two cases where one of Angel's professional acquaintances got a similar request from hotels that looked to them and in those cases, the attempted absconders got a chilling lesson in the rigorous enforcement of compound interest and collection charges. To drive the point home, Conrad and Angel had returned a few weeks earlier from a cruise across the Caribbean during which they had both seen the grim determination with which the operators extracted money from their guests. And made sure the guests paid up.
"And now almost none." Conrad wasn't sympathetic, that would have been condescending. Instead he was simply stating a fact that needed to be confirmed. Listening to him Margaret Porter felt that at last somebody was really listening to her and that she was somehow obliged to return the supportive demeanor by making sure he had the most accurate information she could provide. She had no real idea of course that she was only the latest in a long line of people who had felt that way. What she did know was that the long-bottled up feelings of despair and failure were pouring out of her.
"I wish the 'almost' was true. That way we would have had somebody here. We were sure the bank was going to foreclose on us this month but that lot out there turned up a couple of weeks ago. We had nobody this year until they came. I wanted to wave them on and accept we were done but Kev insisted they were a last chance."
Conrad looked carefully at the registrations book. It was completely empty except for the group of nine camper vans that had appeared just over three weeks earlier. It didn’t take much hard work to realize that the illegal digging at the archeology start had started two nights later and the vicious attack on Eddie Rawlings had taken place a week after their arrival. Margaret Porter was watching him connect the dots and saw that it was rapidly turning into the situation she had feared. She could see herself and her husband being arrested for the attack on the boy. Accomplices at least. Although she wasn’t aware of it, sweat was beginning to form on her forehead.
“Did they make an advance booking?” Again, the question was mildly-phrased but surprised Margaret. It was a point she hadn’t considered.
“I don’t think so, why? Is it important? We have an empty field here.”
“Because a group of nine motor caravans like that would want to be sure there was room for them before they came here. If they are who we think they are, they don’t want to split up. If they didn’t make a reservation, it means they knew this place was empty and probably picked it for that reason. Which bank do you deal with?”
“Checking up on us?” Margaret sounded suddenly bitter, thinking that the apparently amiable police consultant was going to have her arrested anyway.
“No, I want to find out if they were checking your financial references. Perhaps they presented themselves as potential buyers, that’s another thing I need to check. Under the circumstances you have described, a potential buyer would get a lot of bank cooperation quickly. They’d know that you were on your uppers and that you’d agree to a lot of conditions that owners with a good business cash flow would refuse.”
Margaret got the bank details and the name of the customer service representative she had been dealing with. She also had a notification from the bank that a credit check had been made concerning them which the bank had refused to supply on client confidentiality grounds. That gave Conrad the interesting fact that the affairs of the caravan park had reached the Regional Office level of the bank. Clearly, even with a small level of business in recent weeks, the bank had decided enough was enough.
Main Entrance, the Traveler’s Rest Camping Site.
“Take my advice. Give it up. This place is gone.” Angel sat on the hood of her police car while she looked around the camping site, waiting for Conrad to return.
“Aren’t you going to ask me any questions?” Kevin Porter was confused by her apparent disinterest in the park.
“What do you think I am? A game-show hostess?” Angel was confused when Porter started laughing. She couldn’t understand what she had said that was funny but she joined in the laughter anyway. It would take somebody who knew her well to realize her laughter was faked.
Porter didn’t know her that well. “I don’t know what you are and that’s the truth. Oh, I saw your warrant card all right but you’re not like any copper I’ve ever seen before.”
"Amongst other things I'm a firearms instructor. At the moment, we're investigating the attack on Eddie Rawlings, something that might need more muscle than usual. That attack attracted the interest of serious authorities."
"Damn good to hear. That poor kid." Porter looked pointedly over his shoulder to where the group of nine motor caravans were parked. "I wonder who could have done it."
"If you aren't damned careful, you'll find you did." Angel was speaking the flat literal truth and Porter knew it. "The people who tried to kill Eddie are vicious hardened criminals and they wouldn’t hesitate to frame you and your wife. Conrad and I are good at our jobs and we'll do our best to protect you both but let me tell you something. A good frame is very hard to beat and you might go down despite our help. If the ordinary decent criminals think the pair of you smashed up a kid's legs like that, you'll be starting a new career as the cell-block's go-to girlfriend while by the time the women have finished cutting up your wife's face, you'd never be able to recognize her again."
Once again, Porter recognized the grim truth when he heard it. "Look, ma'am, they're Nighthawkers over there. I don’t officially know that but I've seen the metal detectors and they've got a mass of digging equipment. They don’t even bother to hide it much. They were all out the night that kid got crippled."
"That's bad. For you as well as them. Where they are concerned it puts them squarely in our sights. For you, it means that you are going to be key eyewitnesses against them. They tried to kill Eddie, very brutally. Do you think they will less to you, either of you, if it suits them?"
"Why should you care? All you coppers want is to get your convictions."
"I don’t care about you. Conrad does because his life's work is protecting innocent people. I care about Conrad. So you got lucky there. Now, like I said, give it up. This place is gone."
"But it's our business. Without it we've got nothing. Not even a pot to piss in. We'll be destitute."
"You've got nothing . . . now. You're destitute . . . . . now. Add up all the money you've put into this place even after you knew it was a failure and it would have been enough to restart your lives. You didn't do that when you should but you can still cut your losses. Why take a chance on being framed for a crime you had nothing to do with? Just get out of here and we'll deal with these people."
Angel was prevented from continuing further by the sound of her portable telephone. Conrad had taught her to apologize to people for answering it while she was talking to them so she did so. The call was a long text message from Doctor Toscana in Italy and she knew she needed to read it quickly. When she had finished, she was smiling broadly. Conrad, approaching with Margaret Porter and with a pile of books in his arms took note of the expression. "Angel, where do we go from here?"
"To talk to that group over there."
"Kev, I want to call the bank tomorrow. It's time we gave up on this place." Margaret had come to the conclusion that what was done was done and she was prepared to make a fight over the issue. So, her husband's reply astonished her.
"Why wait until tomorrow, Margie? If were done, t'were best done quickly. Give Brian Weston a call right away and we'll tell him we want out. We'll sign the paperwork as soon as he has it ready."
"Thank God!" Margaret Porter closed her eyes in relief as she felt a great weight lifted off her soul. Once glance told her that her husband felt the same way. "What changed your mind?"
"Somebody threw a bucket of iced water over me. We'd better decide on where we'll go from here though."
Angel watched while the two set off for the administrative office. Conrad did the same, noting the way the tension between them that had been so obvious on arrival had now subsided. Then, he returned his attention to Angel. "Well, that gets them out of the line of fire. Now, what's pleasing you?"
"I just heard from Doctor Toscana. He's been looking at my latest set of scans and bloodwork. Here read it for yourself." She handed him her portable telephone with the text message she had received on display.
Over a year had passed since she had been critically wounded, and in that time Conrad had become adept at reading her medical reports. Her slow recovery had been punctuated by set-backs and unexpected issues that had required additional surgery but the latest set of data was the best yet. Her liver functions were indistinguishable from normal and the regrowth process was almost complete. It was the last line that had made her so happy.
"In addition to your glass of wine a day, you can now have a shot of rum per week." Conrad read the note while trying to stop himself laughing. "We'll have to hit the nearest pub tonight to celebrate."
"I was hoping you'd say that. First, we need to have a quiet chat with those nighthawkers."
The Traveler's Rest Camping Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"I told you those Nighthawkers would be nothing but trouble. You should never have let them in here." Margaret Porter snarled the words at her husband. The immediate cause of her distress was the sight of a police car making its way across the camping site towards the managerial offices. There was no question of this being a friendly or routine visit. The car had all its lights on and its headlights were strobing. Compared with the impressive display, the sound of its siren was a mere additional detail.
"We didn't have much of a choice, did we? They weren't going to take no for an answer and if we'd tried to give them one, the bank would have been here next month to foreclose." Kevin Porter was merely speaking the truth. The mobile caravan site had never prospered, and the bank was beginning to ask pointed questions about when they were likely to see some repayments on the loans they had extended. Questions that had now included the almost-explicit addition "like immediately, or else". The money the column of nine camper trucks had brought in had fended off that threat for a month or two at least. Fending off disaster for a month or two at a time had become a familiar way of life. "Anyway, we haven't any proof they are Nighthawkers."
"Only because you never looked for any." Margaret Porter watched the police car closing in and surreptitiously opened a couple of buttons on her blouse. She reasoned that showing some extra cleavage couldn’t hurt. Then she cursed quietly. The car had stopped a few yards away and a woman got out of the driving seat. Damn, now it would take a miracle for a little extra cleavage to do any good.
The situation was confusing her. The police car had two occupants, a man and a woman, both in civilian clothing. Margaret assumed that they were a pair of detectives but she couldn't work out which was the one in charge. Usually it was painfully obvious who was the Detective Inspector and who the Detective Sergeant. This time, it wasn't so simple. Another thing was that the police woman was Chinese. Half -Chinese Margaret amended She's a bit bigger and more heavily-built than full-blooded Chinese. And she doesn't look like a cop, she walks differently and there's open menace in the way she looks at us. More like a gangster than a police officer. The other one, the police man, he's more like a cop but there's something different about him as well. I don’t like this, don’t like it at all. Why do I get the feeling we've stepped into something that could drown us in crap?
"Good morning, Sir, Madam. Are you the managers here?" It was the man that spoke, causing Margaret to assume he was the one in charge.
"I am." Margaret and her husband had answered simultaneously, something that caused the man to smile slightly. Margaret didn't see why he was amused; she was angry at her husband for talking over her. Yet it was the police woman who responded and when she did so, her voice crackled with authority. It also lacked any semblance of sympathy or compassion.
"I am Inspector Angelique de Llorente from the Thames Valley Police, assigned here on direct authority from the Home Secretary. This is my associate, Conrad. I want to see your registration books. Now."
"Have you got a warrant?" Kevin Porter asked the question with a level of aggression in his voice that made Margaret Porter wonder why she had ever married him. The cold, pitiless gaze in Inspector de Llorente's eyes gave her the idea that she might not be married to him much longer and she wondered if being a widow would allow her to get out from under all the debts the ill-starred caravan park business had loaded her family with.
"As a matter of fact we have." The policeman Inspector de Llorente had called 'Conrad' pulled a search-and-seizure warrant out from his pocket. Actually, it was Angel who had stopped at the Magistrate's Court and collected one. In doing so, Conrad had noted that she was beginning to act like a police officer although whether that was actually her adapting to her position or simply mimicking the behavior around her was harder to guess. It really didn’t matter since he would be doing most of the questioning. It was just that, like the headlights display on the way in, the game they were playing had only just started. He handed the warrant over to Margaret who read it carefully.
"Of course, officers. If you will just excuse me, I'll go and get them."
"If you don't mind, ma'am, I'll go with you." Conrad had his usual soft, mild manner in place and it reassured Margaret greatly. She found the idea of getting as far away as possible from the Detective Inspector congenial. As far as she was concerned, if anybody had to deal with that she-demon, her husband was welcome to the job.
In what passed for the administration office, Margaret pulled down the registration book from the shelf and put it on the desk. "If you'd like to take a seat, officer, all our bookings are in there. Our accounts are in different books; I can get you those as well. If you have any questions, just ask me."
There was a tiny emphasis on the word 'me' that made Conrad smile gently. "Thank you, that would be most helpful. Now, you are?"
"Margaret Porter."
"And you and your husband run this business? By the way, I'm not a police officer, just a civilian consultant. Just call me Conrad."
Margaret relaxed a little more, relieved that she wasn't dealing with a sworn officer but a civilian assistant. That explains the attitude of Inspector de Llorente. She's probably offended at being asked to work with a civilian. "Yeah, we run this place for what it is worth."
"Why do I get the feeling you actually run the place?" Conrad asked the question sympathetically and with an obvious glimmer of humor.
Margaret relaxed still further. "Well, I do the books and all the paperwork. And keep the bank at bay, yeah. Kevin looks after the site, does most of the repairs and maintenance. To be fair, he's good at it. We save a lot by not having to bring in tradespeople to do the routine work. He also socializes with the guests when we have any. Which means he spends the money we saved by doing our own maintenance on buying beer."
"Business not good then." Once more, Conrad had asked the right question, one that turned him from an interviewer into a confidante.
"I wish it reached the level of not good." Margaret sounded bitter. "Look, don't get me wrong when I said Kev spends the money we saved on beer. He does, but it wouldn’t make any difference if he didn’t. This place was a flop right from the start. At first, we kept believing it would get better, but it never did. We were too late you see. Ten, twenty years earlier, when a week or two in a caravan was a nearest thing to a luxury holiday people could afford, caravan sites like this made money hand over fist. Now, all these places are empty and didn't we just come in as the caravan site business collapsed? First year or two, we had a handful of guests but they weren't big spenders to start with and quite a few of them ran out without paying their bills. I'd like to see them try that on a cruise ship or in a posh hotel."
"I know what you mean. We get inquiries from foreign hotels now and then on guests who have skipped out." That was quite true; the various police divisions in Britain did get such inquiries from foreign police forces about tourists who believed that leaving a country unexpectedly relieved them from the responsibility of paying their hotel bills. There were one or two cases where one of Angel's professional acquaintances got a similar request from hotels that looked to them and in those cases, the attempted absconders got a chilling lesson in the rigorous enforcement of compound interest and collection charges. To drive the point home, Conrad and Angel had returned a few weeks earlier from a cruise across the Caribbean during which they had both seen the grim determination with which the operators extracted money from their guests. And made sure the guests paid up.
"And now almost none." Conrad wasn't sympathetic, that would have been condescending. Instead he was simply stating a fact that needed to be confirmed. Listening to him Margaret Porter felt that at last somebody was really listening to her and that she was somehow obliged to return the supportive demeanor by making sure he had the most accurate information she could provide. She had no real idea of course that she was only the latest in a long line of people who had felt that way. What she did know was that the long-bottled up feelings of despair and failure were pouring out of her.
"I wish the 'almost' was true. That way we would have had somebody here. We were sure the bank was going to foreclose on us this month but that lot out there turned up a couple of weeks ago. We had nobody this year until they came. I wanted to wave them on and accept we were done but Kev insisted they were a last chance."
Conrad looked carefully at the registrations book. It was completely empty except for the group of nine camper vans that had appeared just over three weeks earlier. It didn’t take much hard work to realize that the illegal digging at the archeology start had started two nights later and the vicious attack on Eddie Rawlings had taken place a week after their arrival. Margaret Porter was watching him connect the dots and saw that it was rapidly turning into the situation she had feared. She could see herself and her husband being arrested for the attack on the boy. Accomplices at least. Although she wasn’t aware of it, sweat was beginning to form on her forehead.
“Did they make an advance booking?” Again, the question was mildly-phrased but surprised Margaret. It was a point she hadn’t considered.
“I don’t think so, why? Is it important? We have an empty field here.”
“Because a group of nine motor caravans like that would want to be sure there was room for them before they came here. If they are who we think they are, they don’t want to split up. If they didn’t make a reservation, it means they knew this place was empty and probably picked it for that reason. Which bank do you deal with?”
“Checking up on us?” Margaret sounded suddenly bitter, thinking that the apparently amiable police consultant was going to have her arrested anyway.
“No, I want to find out if they were checking your financial references. Perhaps they presented themselves as potential buyers, that’s another thing I need to check. Under the circumstances you have described, a potential buyer would get a lot of bank cooperation quickly. They’d know that you were on your uppers and that you’d agree to a lot of conditions that owners with a good business cash flow would refuse.”
Margaret got the bank details and the name of the customer service representative she had been dealing with. She also had a notification from the bank that a credit check had been made concerning them which the bank had refused to supply on client confidentiality grounds. That gave Conrad the interesting fact that the affairs of the caravan park had reached the Regional Office level of the bank. Clearly, even with a small level of business in recent weeks, the bank had decided enough was enough.
Main Entrance, the Traveler’s Rest Camping Site.
“Take my advice. Give it up. This place is gone.” Angel sat on the hood of her police car while she looked around the camping site, waiting for Conrad to return.
“Aren’t you going to ask me any questions?” Kevin Porter was confused by her apparent disinterest in the park.
“What do you think I am? A game-show hostess?” Angel was confused when Porter started laughing. She couldn’t understand what she had said that was funny but she joined in the laughter anyway. It would take somebody who knew her well to realize her laughter was faked.
Porter didn’t know her that well. “I don’t know what you are and that’s the truth. Oh, I saw your warrant card all right but you’re not like any copper I’ve ever seen before.”
"Amongst other things I'm a firearms instructor. At the moment, we're investigating the attack on Eddie Rawlings, something that might need more muscle than usual. That attack attracted the interest of serious authorities."
"Damn good to hear. That poor kid." Porter looked pointedly over his shoulder to where the group of nine motor caravans were parked. "I wonder who could have done it."
"If you aren't damned careful, you'll find you did." Angel was speaking the flat literal truth and Porter knew it. "The people who tried to kill Eddie are vicious hardened criminals and they wouldn’t hesitate to frame you and your wife. Conrad and I are good at our jobs and we'll do our best to protect you both but let me tell you something. A good frame is very hard to beat and you might go down despite our help. If the ordinary decent criminals think the pair of you smashed up a kid's legs like that, you'll be starting a new career as the cell-block's go-to girlfriend while by the time the women have finished cutting up your wife's face, you'd never be able to recognize her again."
Once again, Porter recognized the grim truth when he heard it. "Look, ma'am, they're Nighthawkers over there. I don’t officially know that but I've seen the metal detectors and they've got a mass of digging equipment. They don’t even bother to hide it much. They were all out the night that kid got crippled."
"That's bad. For you as well as them. Where they are concerned it puts them squarely in our sights. For you, it means that you are going to be key eyewitnesses against them. They tried to kill Eddie, very brutally. Do you think they will less to you, either of you, if it suits them?"
"Why should you care? All you coppers want is to get your convictions."
"I don’t care about you. Conrad does because his life's work is protecting innocent people. I care about Conrad. So you got lucky there. Now, like I said, give it up. This place is gone."
"But it's our business. Without it we've got nothing. Not even a pot to piss in. We'll be destitute."
"You've got nothing . . . now. You're destitute . . . . . now. Add up all the money you've put into this place even after you knew it was a failure and it would have been enough to restart your lives. You didn't do that when you should but you can still cut your losses. Why take a chance on being framed for a crime you had nothing to do with? Just get out of here and we'll deal with these people."
Angel was prevented from continuing further by the sound of her portable telephone. Conrad had taught her to apologize to people for answering it while she was talking to them so she did so. The call was a long text message from Doctor Toscana in Italy and she knew she needed to read it quickly. When she had finished, she was smiling broadly. Conrad, approaching with Margaret Porter and with a pile of books in his arms took note of the expression. "Angel, where do we go from here?"
"To talk to that group over there."
"Kev, I want to call the bank tomorrow. It's time we gave up on this place." Margaret had come to the conclusion that what was done was done and she was prepared to make a fight over the issue. So, her husband's reply astonished her.
"Why wait until tomorrow, Margie? If were done, t'were best done quickly. Give Brian Weston a call right away and we'll tell him we want out. We'll sign the paperwork as soon as he has it ready."
"Thank God!" Margaret Porter closed her eyes in relief as she felt a great weight lifted off her soul. Once glance told her that her husband felt the same way. "What changed your mind?"
"Somebody threw a bucket of iced water over me. We'd better decide on where we'll go from here though."
Angel watched while the two set off for the administrative office. Conrad did the same, noting the way the tension between them that had been so obvious on arrival had now subsided. Then, he returned his attention to Angel. "Well, that gets them out of the line of fire. Now, what's pleasing you?"
"I just heard from Doctor Toscana. He's been looking at my latest set of scans and bloodwork. Here read it for yourself." She handed him her portable telephone with the text message she had received on display.
Over a year had passed since she had been critically wounded, and in that time Conrad had become adept at reading her medical reports. Her slow recovery had been punctuated by set-backs and unexpected issues that had required additional surgery but the latest set of data was the best yet. Her liver functions were indistinguishable from normal and the regrowth process was almost complete. It was the last line that had made her so happy.
"In addition to your glass of wine a day, you can now have a shot of rum per week." Conrad read the note while trying to stop himself laughing. "We'll have to hit the nearest pub tonight to celebrate."
"I was hoping you'd say that. First, we need to have a quiet chat with those nighthawkers."
Re: 2008 - Eye of the Nighthawker
Chapter Five
Caravan Group, The Traveler’s Rest Camping Site.
"He's in charge." Conrad had been watching the interactions between the members of the caravan group when they saw the police car approaching and had made his pick based on the reactions of the people he had seen. Once again, Angel had the car's lights turned on to incite just that reaction. She nodded in agreement although her perception was based on the chosen man's body language. Two different observers coming to the same conclusion using different methodologies was fairly conclusive.
"I think we need to shake him up a bit." Angel was doing a rapid tactical analysis of the situation. There were enough people in the target group to present a risk to a normal police investigator but she knew full well that if they tried it on her, it would be a massacre. She still wasn't back at the top of her game but the difference between her and them was so great that her still-limited agility didn’t really matter. What did worry her was how she would explain a couple of dozen bullet-riddled dead bodies. She parked the car and got out of the driving seat. Her walk from there to the collection of caravans was an arrogant strut that was openly aggressive. Conrad, following a few steps behind her, was watching her back very carefully.
"You in charge here?" Her question was snapped out with a healthy dose of authority behind it.
"Might be. Who wants to know?" The man sitting in a camp chair was trying to meet Angel's brusqueness with his own.
"Special Inspector Angelique de Llorente, on assignment to the Home Office. And you are?"
"Garridan Rootham." The reply was guarded and resentful.
Angel nodded to herself; Rootham's name had been on the registration book when the convoy of motor caravans had entered the site. That meant that he was either telling the truth or at least was being consistent in using a false identity. "What are you doing here?"
"We're Travelling Folk, Inspector. We got a real good deal on this place since we're the only ones here. So, we decided to stay for a while. Safe place for the kiddies to play and there's baths and showers as well."
"We're investigating the attempted murder of Edward Rawlings, a member of an archeological dig near here. It was a very brutal attack and the Home Office wants it solved. So, we'd like answers to a few questions."
It was the sign for Conrad to slide in and start the interview. His polite and mild-mannered approach contrasted sharply with Angel's confrontational aggression and Rootham couldn't help but respond. Watching Conrad at work made Angel smile to herself. Good Cop/Bad Cop might be a cliché but it got to be one because it works.
As usual, the subject of Conrad's interview found himself being drawn deeper and deeper into a net. It didn't take long for the subject to get around to the issue of metal detecting. Both Conrad and Angel were surprised to find that Rootham made no secret of the fact that his group were well-equipped with metal detectors and were skilled in their use.
"We're Detectorists, not Nighthawkers. It's like this, see. Using the detectors looks easy but it isn't. Any fool can get a ping but knowing how deep that find is, how big it is and what it's made of, that takes practice. Whenever there's a dig, we go to the organizers and offer our services. We get a signed contract and all. They promise us so much per day per person while we survey the site for them. We got good references from digs we've helped like that."
"And I suppose it goes unsaid that if they don’t hire you, their site will get mysteriously pillaged." Angel's cold, harsh voice seemed to have a glimmer of amusement in it.
"We thought like that at first, yeah. We quickly gave it up when we found we don’t need to. Anyway, there's not much money to be made by stealing relics and selling them. Everybody knows they're stolen and we get pennies on the pound of metal scrap value, if that. We do better by keeping it legal. Like I said, we got good references, ones that hold up when people check them. And they do."
Angel couldn’t help laughing at that. On a small scale, these people had made the same discovery she had; it was very often more profitable to be honest than to be bent. If the objective was to make money instead of just committing crimes for the hell of it, then careful thought was needed. She looked around at the site surrounding her. The vehicles were newer and in better condition than usual and the children playing seemed healthier and better dressed than normal. She caught Conrad's eye and nodded to him. In her opinion they were being told the truth.
"You were out late the night that Rawlings was attacked. Where were you?" Conrad wanted to get the details resolved before leaving.
"Some of the kiddies were ill. Stomach bug. The womenfolk think that some of the food were bad that night. Us older ones were all right but kiddies, they got sensitive stomachs. We took them to the emergency care down in't town. They'll remember us."
Angel stepped away and called the center on her portable telephone. The staff remembered the group of travelers with sick kids turning up late at night, not least because they hadn't complained when being asked to pay up in advance. She got the feeling that while the visiting fee at an emergency care center wasn't onerous, getting travelers
to pay it was a task. Not that time.
"Confirmed, Conrad. Mr. Rootham, have you been to the new dig yet?"
"Seeing them today we are."
Angel gave him a lop-sided grin. "I'll put in a good word for you."
Once they were back in the car, Conrad turned to Angel with curiosity in his voice. "Did you really mean that Angel?"
"Of course. If they really are innocent, having me recognize it will smooth the way for us asking more pointed questions. If they are guilty, they'll think they've pulled the wool over my eyes and might drop their guard.
Saloon Bar, The Nurse & Minotaur Public House, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"Thar's good ahnd bahd news Ahngel." Hardly Phil was staring at the drawing of the dig in frustration. "We fahn the wahls ye saed be thar raht enuf. An we dug aht the first gate whalhaas no prahblim. Baht, t'other warnt thar."
He looked at the drawing lugubriously. The four large wheelhouses were indeed joined by walls, just as Angel had predicted. The problem was that the longest wall, the one they had all hoped would contain a gatehouse, was off-alignment and the other small wheelhouse wasn't there. What the digging team had found so far was spectacular enough but the incomplete gatehouse was a real blow. He took a deep draught from his pint of bitter and stared at the plan that was slowly emerging in front of him.
Angel, though, was curious about something else. "Where did this place get the 'Nurse and Minotaur' name?"
"Ah, ma'am, that be from an old local legend. There's a large cave in the hillside behind us and legend is that a Minotaur lived there."
"Mythical monster that was half-human, half bull. Probably an unusually big bear." Conrad explained helpfully.
"Aye, that's it. Although I'm not so sure about the bear bit. Anyway, the Minotaur would attack people on the road nearby, then rob and kill them. One day, a gallant knight turned up and offered to kill the Minotaur. For a fee of course. T'was a hard-run fight and neither had the edge. Both were badly wounded and too exhausted to continue the battle. Then a brave nurse, one of the ladies from a local nunnery, came on the scene and treated the knight's wounds. To his horror she then went to the Minotaur and treated his wounds as well. Both knight and Minotaur were so impressed by her bravery the Minotaur swore never to harm any of the local people again and the knight swore to leave the Minotaur alone unless they broke that oath."
"A good local legend." Conrad liked the story. "Bravery is rewarded and virtue triumphs over hate and fear. A valuable teaching story for the local children."
"Strangers might say so but back in The Occupation, a group of Black Shirts attacked a District Nurse they believed, probably rightly, was helping the Resistance. They caught her one night. When morning came, the nurse was scared out of her wits and incoherent but all the Black Shirts were dead. She never could remember what had happened but the black shirts were trampled to death by what looked like giant bulls. The pub's named after her and them that rescued her. Enjoy your drinks, ladies and gentlemen and good luck with your dig."
In the background, Hardly Phil kept supping at his pints while he stared at the settlement diagram. Suddenly, his face lit up. "Ahngel, ye are the expaht on protachtin villahges. Is tha' any advantahge in a gaht at nanty degrees to a wahl?"
Angel thought about that carefully. "Yeah, damn big ones. If the gate is flush with the wall, the charge is a straight run in for the attacker. If it's at 90 degrees, the charge has to turn through the same angle to hit the gate. Worse, they have to make that turn while under a cross-fire from the gatehouse and wall. Also, if the attackers try to bypass the gate and hit a section of wall, there's a good chance the outer tower will be firing on them from behind. Come to think of it, the same applied to using a battering ram."
Hardy started sketching again, once more with an accuracy that was breathtaking. He drew a wall at an angle from the corner wheelhouse that put the missing gatehouse some ten feet in front of the one that had already been found. "Hars that Ahngel?"
Angel thought for a minute or so. "That works. Makes it easier to block with an overturned cart as well. An exploratory trench?"
"You're becoming a real archeologist, Angel. That's exactly what we will do tomorrow." Mad Tom looked at the new drawing. "There's something else as well. Our working hypothesis is that the river broke through the neck of land and flooded this place. Since the place was walled, the people inside would have had plenty of warning to make their escape. With this layout, the perpendicular gate is going to act like a scoop and direct the floodwater into the settlement. What would have been a slow, steady build-up of water will instead be a torrent that would have flooded the area inside the walls very quickly. Also, it would have washed everything to the back of the fortified area. People would have got out over the wall, but they would have had to abandon everything. That suggests the really rich finds will be along this back wall here."
Angel glanced around, noting that all the members of the TV crew were absent and most of the students were in the public bar where the beer was significantly cheaper. "Tom, I suggest we keep that to ourselves for a while. Let it out and the area will be pillaged before we can have a good look."
Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"This must be the market area. See how the six roundhouses form a square right by the entrance? We should dig there." Prema looked at the model of the dig site, now already known as Washingborough Castle, admiring the model layout that Mad Tom had been up all night building. "This is fantastic, unique. There's nothing like this anywhere in Europe that I know of."
"Well, there is, but they were built two thousand years later. It's almost enough to make somebody believe in time travel. Can you imagine some poor bloke from the 13th century somehow carried back in time to the 7th century BCE and coming up with this to protect himself?" Penny looked at the model again. "Over here, this triangular area with a single roundhouse. I bet that's where the livestock was kept when it was brought within the walls for some reason. Isn't that the roundhouse that was pillaged?"
"It was." Mad Tom shook his head. "We were lucky there, they picked the least valuable of the potential sites. Once word spreads on how spectacular this site truly is, we're going to need an army to defend it."
"Er, Tom." Penny had spotted the commotion outside. "I think one has just arrived."
By the time everybody had left the command center and seen what was going on, the center of the base area was full of vehicles. There were three black six-by-six Land rover Discoveries, all with heavily-tinted windows and a stylized golden Chinese dragon painted on the front doors. Beside them were two police cars with a seriously high-ranking Mercia police officer watching the group assemble. He saw Angel in the background and gave her a friendly wave. Angel's return wave was equally friendly although hers was faked of course. Mercia had been an early sign-on for the Dragon Security Consultants firearms training courses.
"I, Chen Mao-lee of Dragon Security Consultants do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that I will well and truly serve His Majesty King William in the office of Special Constable, with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality, upholding fundamental human rights and according equal respect to all people; and that I will, to the best of my power, cause the peace to be kept and preserved and prevent all offences against people and property; and that while I continue to hold the said office I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties thereof faithfully according to law."
The police officer, a Superintendent, saluted his new Special Constable and presented her with her badge. Then, Mao-lee stepped back and another one of the dozen men and women who had arrived in the Land rovers stepped forward to swear his oath and receive his badge. The process repeated until all twelve had been sworn in. There was much mutual shaking of hands before the regular police departed, leaving the dig in the hands of the guards hired to protect it.
As the police drove out, Garridan Rootham and one of his people drove in, their somewhat battered Army surplus four-wheel land rover looking decidedly the worse for wear compared with the sleek black Triad vehicles. He had an appointment with Hardy and the other members of the dig committee during which he explained what he was proposing, the people he would commit to the operation and his daily rate. He ended up by presenting his references and testimonials. They were, as Angel had found out the previous evening, impressive.
"Whart do ya thank, Ahngel?" Hardy looked at her intently.
"I checked those references last night. They're real and they check out. I had DSC run a check as well and they don’t quite come up clean but their metal detecting operations do. There's minor complaints on file about them. Petty things, disturbing the peace and so on. Frankly, they look more like misunderstandings and objections to travelers in general than any serious bother. I'd say they would be a good hire. One thing I did notice when I was at their present camp. Most traveler's camps are pretty dirty and the kids there run around unsupervised. Rootham's site is clean, well-policed and the children are healthy, well-fed and well-dressed. They might be travelers but their heads are in the right place." Angel gave no sign of it but her description made her wonder what would have happened to her if she'd been brought up as part of Garridan Rootham's tribe.
"All raaht. Mr. Rootham, ya hahred. We pay yah fah each dah's work in advahnse."
By the time all the paperwork had been signed, a package of seven drafts had come through from the Burser's Office by Cybernet transfer. Hardy gave Rootham the first one.
"Mr. Rootham . . . "
"Call me Garry, Inspector."
"I'm Angel. I'd better introduce you to our security people here. They're issuing passes to everybody who has a right to be here. The person in charge, Chen Mao-lee, will make sure you have everything you need. She's good."
One of the Dragon land rovers had its tail gate up and a white screen erected alongside. The regular members of the dig team were being quickly paraded in front of the screen, photographed using an electronic camera and the picture transferred to a pass-printing machine in the back of the Discovery that spat out a neatly-laminated card.
"How is it going, younger sister?"
The girl spun around at the sound of Angel's voice. "Eldest sister! We're just getting set up now. We have three teams of four guards each, working six-hour shifts. Have you seen our new drones?"
"I heard you had them but I've never seen one. Can we look?"
Mao-lee gave a smile of genuine delight. She was one of the qualified drone pilots on the team and was proud of the capabilities deployed by her miniature aircraft. "Of course; we have the first one assembled already. We'll be test-flying it in a few minutes. I'll get younger brother Yip Jun-ren to take over making the identity cards and we can go and watch. Zhēnxiàng is with you of course?"
"Of course. By the way, it might be a good idea to send the pictures you are taking to the University Bursar just to make sure they are supposed to be here."
Mao-lee laughed. "Already done, Eldest Sister."
"Good girl."
With Yip in place handling the identity card preparation, Mao-lee led Conrad and Angel over to a flat patch of ground where the first of the three drones was ready. It was a bit like a small aircraft but had four pivoting fans arranged in a square around the fuselage. What was immediately noticeable was the sensor pod under the fuselage. It contained a camera and a downlink as well as several things Angel didn’t recognize.
She watched Mao-lee start the drone's engines and control the little aircraft using a pad. Angel had expected the drone to be flown from something that looked like an aircraft cockpit but the pad was actually no larger than her portable telephone. Even so, most of the screen was a picture of the ground taken from the camera.
"We have thermal and light-amplification night vision equipment for work in the dark and an image recognition link. We can take a picture of somebody, have it compared to a recognition library and if they are on file, get their identity. That's another thing the ID pictures we are taking are for. We'll have one of these up all night. We don't have to fly them, we can put them on a set racetrack and they'll fly themselves." Mao-lee looked around and added very quietly, "and all three of these drones can carry a custom-modified ZPK-96 aimed by the camera."
"That is an impressive piece of equipment." Conrad was watching the picture of the site unrolling beneath the drone as it started its racetrack surveillance pattern. "It's much quieter than I'd expected. I doubt if the people on the ground would even hear it overhead."
"That's the idea, Zhēnxiàng." Mao-lee smiled at the praise for her drone, especially pleased that it came from the companion of Hēilóng Shāshǒu. "They'll never know they are being watched."
Caravan Group, The Traveler’s Rest Camping Site.
"He's in charge." Conrad had been watching the interactions between the members of the caravan group when they saw the police car approaching and had made his pick based on the reactions of the people he had seen. Once again, Angel had the car's lights turned on to incite just that reaction. She nodded in agreement although her perception was based on the chosen man's body language. Two different observers coming to the same conclusion using different methodologies was fairly conclusive.
"I think we need to shake him up a bit." Angel was doing a rapid tactical analysis of the situation. There were enough people in the target group to present a risk to a normal police investigator but she knew full well that if they tried it on her, it would be a massacre. She still wasn't back at the top of her game but the difference between her and them was so great that her still-limited agility didn’t really matter. What did worry her was how she would explain a couple of dozen bullet-riddled dead bodies. She parked the car and got out of the driving seat. Her walk from there to the collection of caravans was an arrogant strut that was openly aggressive. Conrad, following a few steps behind her, was watching her back very carefully.
"You in charge here?" Her question was snapped out with a healthy dose of authority behind it.
"Might be. Who wants to know?" The man sitting in a camp chair was trying to meet Angel's brusqueness with his own.
"Special Inspector Angelique de Llorente, on assignment to the Home Office. And you are?"
"Garridan Rootham." The reply was guarded and resentful.
Angel nodded to herself; Rootham's name had been on the registration book when the convoy of motor caravans had entered the site. That meant that he was either telling the truth or at least was being consistent in using a false identity. "What are you doing here?"
"We're Travelling Folk, Inspector. We got a real good deal on this place since we're the only ones here. So, we decided to stay for a while. Safe place for the kiddies to play and there's baths and showers as well."
"We're investigating the attempted murder of Edward Rawlings, a member of an archeological dig near here. It was a very brutal attack and the Home Office wants it solved. So, we'd like answers to a few questions."
It was the sign for Conrad to slide in and start the interview. His polite and mild-mannered approach contrasted sharply with Angel's confrontational aggression and Rootham couldn't help but respond. Watching Conrad at work made Angel smile to herself. Good Cop/Bad Cop might be a cliché but it got to be one because it works.
As usual, the subject of Conrad's interview found himself being drawn deeper and deeper into a net. It didn't take long for the subject to get around to the issue of metal detecting. Both Conrad and Angel were surprised to find that Rootham made no secret of the fact that his group were well-equipped with metal detectors and were skilled in their use.
"We're Detectorists, not Nighthawkers. It's like this, see. Using the detectors looks easy but it isn't. Any fool can get a ping but knowing how deep that find is, how big it is and what it's made of, that takes practice. Whenever there's a dig, we go to the organizers and offer our services. We get a signed contract and all. They promise us so much per day per person while we survey the site for them. We got good references from digs we've helped like that."
"And I suppose it goes unsaid that if they don’t hire you, their site will get mysteriously pillaged." Angel's cold, harsh voice seemed to have a glimmer of amusement in it.
"We thought like that at first, yeah. We quickly gave it up when we found we don’t need to. Anyway, there's not much money to be made by stealing relics and selling them. Everybody knows they're stolen and we get pennies on the pound of metal scrap value, if that. We do better by keeping it legal. Like I said, we got good references, ones that hold up when people check them. And they do."
Angel couldn’t help laughing at that. On a small scale, these people had made the same discovery she had; it was very often more profitable to be honest than to be bent. If the objective was to make money instead of just committing crimes for the hell of it, then careful thought was needed. She looked around at the site surrounding her. The vehicles were newer and in better condition than usual and the children playing seemed healthier and better dressed than normal. She caught Conrad's eye and nodded to him. In her opinion they were being told the truth.
"You were out late the night that Rawlings was attacked. Where were you?" Conrad wanted to get the details resolved before leaving.
"Some of the kiddies were ill. Stomach bug. The womenfolk think that some of the food were bad that night. Us older ones were all right but kiddies, they got sensitive stomachs. We took them to the emergency care down in't town. They'll remember us."
Angel stepped away and called the center on her portable telephone. The staff remembered the group of travelers with sick kids turning up late at night, not least because they hadn't complained when being asked to pay up in advance. She got the feeling that while the visiting fee at an emergency care center wasn't onerous, getting travelers
to pay it was a task. Not that time.
"Confirmed, Conrad. Mr. Rootham, have you been to the new dig yet?"
"Seeing them today we are."
Angel gave him a lop-sided grin. "I'll put in a good word for you."
Once they were back in the car, Conrad turned to Angel with curiosity in his voice. "Did you really mean that Angel?"
"Of course. If they really are innocent, having me recognize it will smooth the way for us asking more pointed questions. If they are guilty, they'll think they've pulled the wool over my eyes and might drop their guard.
Saloon Bar, The Nurse & Minotaur Public House, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"Thar's good ahnd bahd news Ahngel." Hardly Phil was staring at the drawing of the dig in frustration. "We fahn the wahls ye saed be thar raht enuf. An we dug aht the first gate whalhaas no prahblim. Baht, t'other warnt thar."
He looked at the drawing lugubriously. The four large wheelhouses were indeed joined by walls, just as Angel had predicted. The problem was that the longest wall, the one they had all hoped would contain a gatehouse, was off-alignment and the other small wheelhouse wasn't there. What the digging team had found so far was spectacular enough but the incomplete gatehouse was a real blow. He took a deep draught from his pint of bitter and stared at the plan that was slowly emerging in front of him.
Angel, though, was curious about something else. "Where did this place get the 'Nurse and Minotaur' name?"
"Ah, ma'am, that be from an old local legend. There's a large cave in the hillside behind us and legend is that a Minotaur lived there."
"Mythical monster that was half-human, half bull. Probably an unusually big bear." Conrad explained helpfully.
"Aye, that's it. Although I'm not so sure about the bear bit. Anyway, the Minotaur would attack people on the road nearby, then rob and kill them. One day, a gallant knight turned up and offered to kill the Minotaur. For a fee of course. T'was a hard-run fight and neither had the edge. Both were badly wounded and too exhausted to continue the battle. Then a brave nurse, one of the ladies from a local nunnery, came on the scene and treated the knight's wounds. To his horror she then went to the Minotaur and treated his wounds as well. Both knight and Minotaur were so impressed by her bravery the Minotaur swore never to harm any of the local people again and the knight swore to leave the Minotaur alone unless they broke that oath."
"A good local legend." Conrad liked the story. "Bravery is rewarded and virtue triumphs over hate and fear. A valuable teaching story for the local children."
"Strangers might say so but back in The Occupation, a group of Black Shirts attacked a District Nurse they believed, probably rightly, was helping the Resistance. They caught her one night. When morning came, the nurse was scared out of her wits and incoherent but all the Black Shirts were dead. She never could remember what had happened but the black shirts were trampled to death by what looked like giant bulls. The pub's named after her and them that rescued her. Enjoy your drinks, ladies and gentlemen and good luck with your dig."
In the background, Hardly Phil kept supping at his pints while he stared at the settlement diagram. Suddenly, his face lit up. "Ahngel, ye are the expaht on protachtin villahges. Is tha' any advantahge in a gaht at nanty degrees to a wahl?"
Angel thought about that carefully. "Yeah, damn big ones. If the gate is flush with the wall, the charge is a straight run in for the attacker. If it's at 90 degrees, the charge has to turn through the same angle to hit the gate. Worse, they have to make that turn while under a cross-fire from the gatehouse and wall. Also, if the attackers try to bypass the gate and hit a section of wall, there's a good chance the outer tower will be firing on them from behind. Come to think of it, the same applied to using a battering ram."
Hardy started sketching again, once more with an accuracy that was breathtaking. He drew a wall at an angle from the corner wheelhouse that put the missing gatehouse some ten feet in front of the one that had already been found. "Hars that Ahngel?"
Angel thought for a minute or so. "That works. Makes it easier to block with an overturned cart as well. An exploratory trench?"
"You're becoming a real archeologist, Angel. That's exactly what we will do tomorrow." Mad Tom looked at the new drawing. "There's something else as well. Our working hypothesis is that the river broke through the neck of land and flooded this place. Since the place was walled, the people inside would have had plenty of warning to make their escape. With this layout, the perpendicular gate is going to act like a scoop and direct the floodwater into the settlement. What would have been a slow, steady build-up of water will instead be a torrent that would have flooded the area inside the walls very quickly. Also, it would have washed everything to the back of the fortified area. People would have got out over the wall, but they would have had to abandon everything. That suggests the really rich finds will be along this back wall here."
Angel glanced around, noting that all the members of the TV crew were absent and most of the students were in the public bar where the beer was significantly cheaper. "Tom, I suggest we keep that to ourselves for a while. Let it out and the area will be pillaged before we can have a good look."
Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"This must be the market area. See how the six roundhouses form a square right by the entrance? We should dig there." Prema looked at the model of the dig site, now already known as Washingborough Castle, admiring the model layout that Mad Tom had been up all night building. "This is fantastic, unique. There's nothing like this anywhere in Europe that I know of."
"Well, there is, but they were built two thousand years later. It's almost enough to make somebody believe in time travel. Can you imagine some poor bloke from the 13th century somehow carried back in time to the 7th century BCE and coming up with this to protect himself?" Penny looked at the model again. "Over here, this triangular area with a single roundhouse. I bet that's where the livestock was kept when it was brought within the walls for some reason. Isn't that the roundhouse that was pillaged?"
"It was." Mad Tom shook his head. "We were lucky there, they picked the least valuable of the potential sites. Once word spreads on how spectacular this site truly is, we're going to need an army to defend it."
"Er, Tom." Penny had spotted the commotion outside. "I think one has just arrived."
By the time everybody had left the command center and seen what was going on, the center of the base area was full of vehicles. There were three black six-by-six Land rover Discoveries, all with heavily-tinted windows and a stylized golden Chinese dragon painted on the front doors. Beside them were two police cars with a seriously high-ranking Mercia police officer watching the group assemble. He saw Angel in the background and gave her a friendly wave. Angel's return wave was equally friendly although hers was faked of course. Mercia had been an early sign-on for the Dragon Security Consultants firearms training courses.
"I, Chen Mao-lee of Dragon Security Consultants do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that I will well and truly serve His Majesty King William in the office of Special Constable, with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality, upholding fundamental human rights and according equal respect to all people; and that I will, to the best of my power, cause the peace to be kept and preserved and prevent all offences against people and property; and that while I continue to hold the said office I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties thereof faithfully according to law."
The police officer, a Superintendent, saluted his new Special Constable and presented her with her badge. Then, Mao-lee stepped back and another one of the dozen men and women who had arrived in the Land rovers stepped forward to swear his oath and receive his badge. The process repeated until all twelve had been sworn in. There was much mutual shaking of hands before the regular police departed, leaving the dig in the hands of the guards hired to protect it.
As the police drove out, Garridan Rootham and one of his people drove in, their somewhat battered Army surplus four-wheel land rover looking decidedly the worse for wear compared with the sleek black Triad vehicles. He had an appointment with Hardy and the other members of the dig committee during which he explained what he was proposing, the people he would commit to the operation and his daily rate. He ended up by presenting his references and testimonials. They were, as Angel had found out the previous evening, impressive.
"Whart do ya thank, Ahngel?" Hardy looked at her intently.
"I checked those references last night. They're real and they check out. I had DSC run a check as well and they don’t quite come up clean but their metal detecting operations do. There's minor complaints on file about them. Petty things, disturbing the peace and so on. Frankly, they look more like misunderstandings and objections to travelers in general than any serious bother. I'd say they would be a good hire. One thing I did notice when I was at their present camp. Most traveler's camps are pretty dirty and the kids there run around unsupervised. Rootham's site is clean, well-policed and the children are healthy, well-fed and well-dressed. They might be travelers but their heads are in the right place." Angel gave no sign of it but her description made her wonder what would have happened to her if she'd been brought up as part of Garridan Rootham's tribe.
"All raaht. Mr. Rootham, ya hahred. We pay yah fah each dah's work in advahnse."
By the time all the paperwork had been signed, a package of seven drafts had come through from the Burser's Office by Cybernet transfer. Hardy gave Rootham the first one.
"Mr. Rootham . . . "
"Call me Garry, Inspector."
"I'm Angel. I'd better introduce you to our security people here. They're issuing passes to everybody who has a right to be here. The person in charge, Chen Mao-lee, will make sure you have everything you need. She's good."
One of the Dragon land rovers had its tail gate up and a white screen erected alongside. The regular members of the dig team were being quickly paraded in front of the screen, photographed using an electronic camera and the picture transferred to a pass-printing machine in the back of the Discovery that spat out a neatly-laminated card.
"How is it going, younger sister?"
The girl spun around at the sound of Angel's voice. "Eldest sister! We're just getting set up now. We have three teams of four guards each, working six-hour shifts. Have you seen our new drones?"
"I heard you had them but I've never seen one. Can we look?"
Mao-lee gave a smile of genuine delight. She was one of the qualified drone pilots on the team and was proud of the capabilities deployed by her miniature aircraft. "Of course; we have the first one assembled already. We'll be test-flying it in a few minutes. I'll get younger brother Yip Jun-ren to take over making the identity cards and we can go and watch. Zhēnxiàng is with you of course?"
"Of course. By the way, it might be a good idea to send the pictures you are taking to the University Bursar just to make sure they are supposed to be here."
Mao-lee laughed. "Already done, Eldest Sister."
"Good girl."
With Yip in place handling the identity card preparation, Mao-lee led Conrad and Angel over to a flat patch of ground where the first of the three drones was ready. It was a bit like a small aircraft but had four pivoting fans arranged in a square around the fuselage. What was immediately noticeable was the sensor pod under the fuselage. It contained a camera and a downlink as well as several things Angel didn’t recognize.
She watched Mao-lee start the drone's engines and control the little aircraft using a pad. Angel had expected the drone to be flown from something that looked like an aircraft cockpit but the pad was actually no larger than her portable telephone. Even so, most of the screen was a picture of the ground taken from the camera.
"We have thermal and light-amplification night vision equipment for work in the dark and an image recognition link. We can take a picture of somebody, have it compared to a recognition library and if they are on file, get their identity. That's another thing the ID pictures we are taking are for. We'll have one of these up all night. We don't have to fly them, we can put them on a set racetrack and they'll fly themselves." Mao-lee looked around and added very quietly, "and all three of these drones can carry a custom-modified ZPK-96 aimed by the camera."
"That is an impressive piece of equipment." Conrad was watching the picture of the site unrolling beneath the drone as it started its racetrack surveillance pattern. "It's much quieter than I'd expected. I doubt if the people on the ground would even hear it overhead."
"That's the idea, Zhēnxiàng." Mao-lee smiled at the praise for her drone, especially pleased that it came from the companion of Hēilóng Shāshǒu. "They'll never know they are being watched."
Re: 2008 - Eye of the Nighthawker
Chapter Six
'Congel's' Room, Guest House, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
There was another corkboard now, one that had a map of the castle on it. That map differed from the one at the dig site only in that a single roundhouse, the one that had been tentatively identified as having once belonged to the village herdsman, was outlined in red. A red cross marked the point where Raw Eddie had been found. That simple correlation told Conrad much.
"He was up near 'his' hut when he was attacked. He tried to make a run for the dig buildings a few hundred yards away but the gang caught up with him and brought him down. I'd say that points to the simplest explanation as being the right one. He was trying to guard 'his' hut and salvage what was left of the evidence for his thesis when the Nighthawkers came back, found him and tried to kill him."
"It doesn't really answer any of our questions though, does it?" Angel could sense they were only seeing a small area of the plot and the reason why the crime had happened still eluded them. "If I just wanted Raw Eddie dead, I would have used this."
She took out one of her pistols, then opened a pouch in the side of her overnight bag. Conrad watched while her fingers moved with the deftness of long experience. When she had finished, she had removed a thin metal sleeve that was normally screwed on over the last inch of the barrel and replaced it with a fat, 8-inch long assembly.
"I didn't know you had a silencer Angel."
"I have two but I almost never use them. They're not silencers by the way, that name comes from Hollywood. They are suppressors. Handguns are still noisy; even with both my boys equipped with these, you'd still hear them a long way off. Not least because the bullets are still well supersonic. They also ruin the balance of the piece. The real advantage of a suppressor is that it makes a pistol shot sound different so people think it’s a car backfiring or something. I wouldn’t have chased after Eddie, I'd just have shot him down while he ran."
"So, we come back to motive." Conrad looked at the suppressed Beretta Angel was holding and shuddered. It was a vivid reminder of the violent side of her life, one that to his great relief was now largely in her past. He knew that she still had no compunction or hesitation over killing people if the need arose, it was just that the way her life had developed, that need rarely arose. He realized, with a degree of shock, that as far as he knew, she hadn't killed anybody since St. Peter's Square, over a year before. "How is this for a theory of the crime? Raw Eddie gets the news the roundhouse has been pillaged and he realizes the finds he needed to support his thesis have been stolen. Somehow, he gets film or pictures of the thieves at work and goes back to them to blackmail them into returning his finds. Instead, they try to grab him, he breaks away and runs for it. They chase him, and being a lot fitter, catch him, and torture him for the location of the evidence. When he breaks, they try to kill him."
"The first part is a problem. He'd have to get the evidence the same night as the initial pillaging took place and the attack wasn't known until morning. As far as we know, the nighthawks only came to the dig twice. The first night to pillage the roundhouse, the second being when Raw Eddie was killed. Unless we assume that Rawlings discovered his roundhouse being looted and got the evidence the same night and then never told anybody he had it the times just don’t fit. I can't imagine any of those kids doing that."
Conrad and Angel exchanged meaningful glances. Conrad's expression included a great measure of sadness and regret at his recognition of how innocence wasn't a defense against the evils of the world. That was a thought, of course, that Angel recognized but to which she attached no emotional significance. She'd been more aware of the threats the world presented, and had been more capable of dealing with them when she'd been six years old than these students were at more than three or four times that age.
Conrad sighed slightly. He was realistic enough to know what would have happened if one or more of the female students had gone up there that night. "You are sure that the travelers we met weren't involved."
"No, I'm not sure. I think it's unlikely though. They seem to be really trying to make their metal detection business a success and that means they know they have to be trusted." Angel bit the tip of her left thumb, her right hand still being occupied by holding the suppressed pistol. There was a deeply ingrained and largely justified prejudice against Traveling Folk in British people, especially those who lived in the countryside, that would have directed suspicion against Garridan Rootham and his group. Others would have taken his side, precisely because he was the victim of long-standing prejudice. Angel felt neither motivation and viewed the question with the ice-cold lack of humanity that was her trademark. "People don't always behave logically of course. Somebody from his group might easily have stolen some relics from the finds almost by force of habit. But, that doesn't ring true to me. I think if that had happened and Garry had caught them, he would have handed them over and returned the finds."
"I agree. He's too proud of establishing that business and the relative prosperity it brings, to want it risked. Let's not forget the two who tried to get to Raw Eddie in his hospital room. We haven't seen any trace of either of them here or at the camping site. We need to check with your security team to see if any of the pictures they took are familiar."
Angel grinned at being one step ahead. "Already have. I gave Mao-lee a picture of the man who posed as Eddie's father and she ran image recognition against the pictures she had taken. No matches."
"What about the woman with him?"
There was a long silence from Angel followed by a slightly embarrassed reply that made Conrad chuckle to himself. "I'll get it seen to first thing tomorrow."
Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
Angel had solemnly presented their identity cards at the main entry point to the site and, equally solemnly, they had been validated, Then the gate had been lifted to allow them through. Everybody on the security team had recognized Angel of course and most knew Conrad by sight or reputation. Nevertheless, they had taken as much care over them as everybody else who wanted to enter the site. There was a significant difference between recognition and verification and the gate guards were well aware of it.
"You're heading over to the Central Administration Hut?" Angel had parked their car just outside that building so it was hardly anything more than a formal question. "I'm going over to my trench to do some more digging."
"Don't overdo it." Conrad sounded cautionary but he could see how much fitter Angel was now compared with their time on the cruise ship. For the first time since St Peter's Square, she was back to being the hard body she had been before she had fought her desperate battle against ricin poisoning.
"Conrad, you know if something's worth doing, it's worth doing to excess." Angel smiled at him. The line she had just used was one of Igrat's and Conrad had recognized it instantly. He gave her an ironic salute and disappeared into the hut to update their boards.
The atmosphere in the dig had changed slightly now that the security guards were on site and watching over the students. The air of tension had gone and cheerfulness once more permeated the community. To her amusement, Angel saw one of the female students flirting with a guard who had been walking past her trench. To seek and preserve public favor by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humor, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life and public welfare. Angel wondered if Chris Keeble had realized what he was starting when he had shown Angel Sir Robert Peel's "Principles of Policing" almost a decade ago. Even then, Angel had realized that they applied to the successful operation of organized crime just as much as to policing a community and she had already re-written them to cover the operations of the 14K. She had been impressed by how few changes were needed. One day, she knew, the 'Angelic Principles' would become as much part of Triad operations as the '36 Oaths'.
"How is it going, younger brother?" Angel looked at Chao Zong-xian and the student he was speaking with. Mao-lee had described him as smart, creative, and unconventional, features that made him highly productive and driven. In other words, he had the makings of a first-class Sai-Lo.
"Eldest sister! Cousin Barbara was telling me about her work here. It must be so fascinating to learn about our ancestors like this." Neither Angel nor Chao gave a hint that the off-hand reference had been deliberately created to play to European perceptions of the stereotypical Chinese fixation with their ancestors. It was a small touch intended to create a shared basis for friendly relations between the archeological team and the Triad guards.
"I'm Barbara Wilde." The girl smiled up at Angel. "This trench is exploring the wall buried here. We're trying to decide how it was built. We have both earthwork and stone, the question is how are they integrated?"
"Let me guess. Wild Barbie? I'm Angel."
"That's right, that's me. Pleased to meet you, Angel. Penny told me you were the one who thought there might be a wall here. That was a good catch."
"Thank you." Angel gave an appreciative and completely fake smile. "I would like to know how your work here progresses. Perhaps I can come over some time and you can tell me more? And, perhaps, show me some of the most interesting parts?"
She turned to Chao. "I must get back to my own trench now. Younger brother, Sister Mao-lee tells me your work here is most satisfactory. This is pleasing."
Angel walked across the site, looking at the extensive digging work that was taking place. It was obvious that the rate of work had picked up significantly although she suspected the degree of care had remained the same. The area she had been working on the day before yesterday was typical of the progress that had been made. Her own trench had now been expanded to open the point where the perimeter wall joined the inner gatehouse. A second trench had been dug at 90 degrees to it and that had confirmed Hardy's theory that the two wheelhouses forming the gatehouse were orientated at 90 degrees to the run of the wall.
"Hey, Angel, welcome back!" Prema was in the gap between the two wheelhouses. "How's the investigation going? Or shouldn't I ask?"
"We're basically eliminating possibilities right now. By the way, have you been told there are some experts coming up with metal detectors to help us?"
Prema and Penny nodded, the other workers shook their heads. Looking around, Angel noted something else; when she'd been working here before, the other girls had been wearing long-sleeved T-shirts and normal-length jeans. Now they had changed to sleeveless spaghetti-strap tops and shorts. Penny caught her glance. "When we were told there were security guards coming to look after us, it was mentioned that taking photographs and film of them would be . . . . undesirable. So, all us girls all had a private little meeting of our own and we decided if we showed a bit more skin, the cameramen would concentrate on us, not your people."
Angel laughed in genuine amusement and appreciation of the thought. She was surprised by realizing she had valued the action taken without having Conrad to prompt her. "That's really good. And helpful. Please spread the word around that we feel privileged by you all making the effort to help us. Not many of our clients do that. Found anything good yet?"
"Everything is good, Angel. That's the first lesson. A find may be simple and boring but if it's in the right place and context it can solve a mystery. But, we may have found a real treasure. Come and look at this."
She and Prema led Angel over to the table where the finds were being collected. She checked a list, found a number and picked up the appropriate box. "Now, this is incredible. Really, really valuable."
Inside the box was a heavy bronze object shaped a bit like a key with a long shaft and a wide loop at one end. It was large and very strongly made. Angel was confused; she couldn’t understand what it was or why everybody was so excited over it.
Prema explained. "The earliest doors and gates were made by taking a single slab of wood or stone and drilling two holes in the side, one near the top, the other almost at the bottom. Then, one of these pins would be hammered into the hole so that it was wedged firmly into place. That sounds simple but if the hole is too big or the pin too thin, it'll be loose and fall out. If the hole is too small or the pin too large, the wood or stone will split. Either means all the work will have been wasted so making these fit just right was a skilled job. Then, the builders would place lintels at the top and bottom that also had holes drilled in them. One end of a simple straight pin then gets fixed in the hole with the other end threaded through this loop. Once assembly is finished, the gate will pivot on the loop and pin."
Penny saw that Angel was still mystified by the excitement. "Angel, this is a gate. When you were first here, Phil said that there weren't gates back then. Well, that's not quite true, gates have been found back to 2000 BCE, but they were huge things for city walls, ceremonial buildings and so on. Finding them in a small settlement like this changes everything. It's one more example of the way this place is far in advance of its time."
That made Angel think. "Penny, could this whole place be some kind of hoax? If it's as out of the ordinary as you suggest, could somebody be setting us up?"
Prema shook her head. "Hoaxes do happen, more than we like to admit. Some of them elaborate and really well put together. This isn't one though. The whole site is under a six-foot layer of alluvial clay that has never been disturbed. That's why the context and stratification of a find is so important. We only found it because an RAF Valkyrie was doing a training run with a recon pack and it picked up some odd shadows on the ground. We've done dating checks on the treasure and all the finds are of the right age and the metal ones check out with content correct for the period.
"Wait a minute. So when you are describing this to each other, you'd refer to it as a treasure?"
"It's a find, but collectively we'd call a series of good finds as treasure."
Angel looked again at the gate pivot. "How much is this actually worth?"
"As an object? A few pounds, at most." On its own, out of context, it's just a piece of bronze. To us, a find like this is a more important piece of treasure than a jeweled brooch or gold necklace. We can analyze this metal and it will tell us when this was made and where it came from. People didn't travel far back then, the people who lived here probably never moved more than a mile or two from the place where they were born. If this came a long way, say from southern England or even France, then it shows that really serious trading was going on."
"But an outsider would hear you speaking about 'treasure' and assume you meant coins, golden rings and jewelry. Things that were worth a lot of money."
Penny and Prema exchanged glances, suddenly realizing what Angel was getting at. Penny got in first. "You think that somebody heard us talking about treasure and thought we meant valuable things, not relics that helped explain what this place was and how it worked."
Prema's mind was that of an archeologist, like a detective, she was used to fitting small pieces of evidence together. This time, she fitted all the parts together quickly and came up with a chilling answer. "Penny is right, somebody heard us talking about treasure and assumed we meant gold and silver and precious stones. Not the agricultural tools and related artefacts we actually recovered from the first roundhouse. They tried to rob it to make a big score, searched the roundhouse but didn’t find anything that fitted their definition of treasure. They came back the next night to continue the search but found Raw Eddie up here. Rather than do the hard work of searching, they tortured him to make him tell them where the 'treasure' was. Of course, he couldn’t tell them because there wasn't any. Then, they heard us running up and took off. The people who did that must be right in here with us."
"Yet must also be outsiders who didn’t understand the difference between your language and their language." Angel finished the story off for them. "There's only one group of people who know a little about what goes on here yet are around all the time. The TV crew."
"But some of them have been with us for years!" Penny seemed distraught at the idea.
"Some of them haven't." Prema had dropped her voice and there was a level of menace in her words. "The crew changes every year. Some leave, others come. Angel, I don’t want to tell your people their jobs, but shouldn’t you be looking at the members of the TV crew?”
Angel took no offense at a rank outsider suggesting things her people ought to do. “We are. And don’t hesitate to ask about things like that. All too often when we dig into something that went badly wrong, we find out it was because everybody had spotted a hole in the plan, but assumed it was so obvious that everybody else had spotted it as well. I screwed up last night, missed something obvious, and the warning saved us embarrassment.”
“And there speaks Lordly Angel.” Penny looked around at the dig team. “Mark those words well people.”
“So I’m Lordly Angel?” Angel was genuinely amused by that. “May I ask why?”
“It’s because you’re always assertive, confident and in-charge.” Prema was relieved that Angel wasn’t offended which showed she still had no idea how Angel’s mind worked. When she spoke again, the words came out in a rush. "All the girls admire you. We all wish you'd been here the night Raw Eddie got . . . ."
Prema started shuddering and tears were rolling down her cheeks. "We all heard, nobody could avoid hearing but we all just sat here and looked at each other. Waiting for somebody to make the first move but nobody did and the screaming went on and on. Eventually, when we did do something, when the screaming had already stopped, we found him. It was too late, we all thought he was dead. Have you noticed none of us can look the others in the face?"
"There were probably five men attacking Eddie. At least. How many of you were there?"
Penny answered. "Three of us and four of the lads. Everybody else was down in the village."
"Seven unarmed kids. Now, exactly what would you have done, facing at least five armed and very violent men who have no hesitation about killing people?"
Penny and Prema looked at each other, bewildered. Angel followed it up. "Where I come from we had a story about a boy who had a pet dog. Every day the school bus came to collect the boy and the dog chased after it, trying to rescue his friend. Of course he never did. Then, one day, the school bus had to stop for roadworks and by a super canine effort, the dog caught the bus. Now, he faced a question. He'd caught it, what was he going to do with it? I can't tell you what the dog did but I can tell you what would have happened to you. Your lads would have been clubbed down and killed, before they even understood what they were up against. You wouldn't have been so lucky. You’d have been gang-raped, handed around from one man to the next. After they'd finished with you, they'd have caved your skulls in, the same way they tried to smash Eddie's. Only they'd have succeeded in killing you because our skulls are weaker than men's. You did the right thing by sitting still, hard but right.”
There was a long, long silence as the women imagined the scenes Angel had just described. Eventually Penny asked, very shyly. “If you had been here, Angel, would you have gone up there? What would you have done?”
“Given one of you my portable telephone so you could call for reinforcements. Then gone up there. But, remember I’ve got two pistols, 170 rounds of ammunition and I’ve done this kind of thing before. I’d move up as quietly as possible, get into a good position and open fire on the bad guys without any kind of warning. All of them would be dead before they realized what was happening. Whether that saved Eddie or not is another matter.” Angel thought about that and whether the answer she had given was true. It was now because a hired security team was on site and they were being paid to go in and Angel was duty-bound to support them. But the night Eddie had been attacked? Then, she had had no obligations to him and nothing to gain from helping him. Her mind veered away and she decided it was time to change the subject. “So, what’s Conrad’s nickname?”
“Lucky Conrad. Everybody knows you protect him and we all think that makes him a very lucky man.” That caused a burst of laughter and dispelled the air of horror that had shadowed the conversation.
Angel nodded in acknowledgement. She was about to take her leave of the group to convey the information she had just discovered to Conrad when a thought occurred to her. “The man in charge of the TV program here? I assume he has a nickname as well?”
“Richard Baldwin? Yeah, he’s had one for a long time and he really hates it. He’s Bald Rick.”
'Congel's' Room, Guest House, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
There was another corkboard now, one that had a map of the castle on it. That map differed from the one at the dig site only in that a single roundhouse, the one that had been tentatively identified as having once belonged to the village herdsman, was outlined in red. A red cross marked the point where Raw Eddie had been found. That simple correlation told Conrad much.
"He was up near 'his' hut when he was attacked. He tried to make a run for the dig buildings a few hundred yards away but the gang caught up with him and brought him down. I'd say that points to the simplest explanation as being the right one. He was trying to guard 'his' hut and salvage what was left of the evidence for his thesis when the Nighthawkers came back, found him and tried to kill him."
"It doesn't really answer any of our questions though, does it?" Angel could sense they were only seeing a small area of the plot and the reason why the crime had happened still eluded them. "If I just wanted Raw Eddie dead, I would have used this."
She took out one of her pistols, then opened a pouch in the side of her overnight bag. Conrad watched while her fingers moved with the deftness of long experience. When she had finished, she had removed a thin metal sleeve that was normally screwed on over the last inch of the barrel and replaced it with a fat, 8-inch long assembly.
"I didn't know you had a silencer Angel."
"I have two but I almost never use them. They're not silencers by the way, that name comes from Hollywood. They are suppressors. Handguns are still noisy; even with both my boys equipped with these, you'd still hear them a long way off. Not least because the bullets are still well supersonic. They also ruin the balance of the piece. The real advantage of a suppressor is that it makes a pistol shot sound different so people think it’s a car backfiring or something. I wouldn’t have chased after Eddie, I'd just have shot him down while he ran."
"So, we come back to motive." Conrad looked at the suppressed Beretta Angel was holding and shuddered. It was a vivid reminder of the violent side of her life, one that to his great relief was now largely in her past. He knew that she still had no compunction or hesitation over killing people if the need arose, it was just that the way her life had developed, that need rarely arose. He realized, with a degree of shock, that as far as he knew, she hadn't killed anybody since St. Peter's Square, over a year before. "How is this for a theory of the crime? Raw Eddie gets the news the roundhouse has been pillaged and he realizes the finds he needed to support his thesis have been stolen. Somehow, he gets film or pictures of the thieves at work and goes back to them to blackmail them into returning his finds. Instead, they try to grab him, he breaks away and runs for it. They chase him, and being a lot fitter, catch him, and torture him for the location of the evidence. When he breaks, they try to kill him."
"The first part is a problem. He'd have to get the evidence the same night as the initial pillaging took place and the attack wasn't known until morning. As far as we know, the nighthawks only came to the dig twice. The first night to pillage the roundhouse, the second being when Raw Eddie was killed. Unless we assume that Rawlings discovered his roundhouse being looted and got the evidence the same night and then never told anybody he had it the times just don’t fit. I can't imagine any of those kids doing that."
Conrad and Angel exchanged meaningful glances. Conrad's expression included a great measure of sadness and regret at his recognition of how innocence wasn't a defense against the evils of the world. That was a thought, of course, that Angel recognized but to which she attached no emotional significance. She'd been more aware of the threats the world presented, and had been more capable of dealing with them when she'd been six years old than these students were at more than three or four times that age.
Conrad sighed slightly. He was realistic enough to know what would have happened if one or more of the female students had gone up there that night. "You are sure that the travelers we met weren't involved."
"No, I'm not sure. I think it's unlikely though. They seem to be really trying to make their metal detection business a success and that means they know they have to be trusted." Angel bit the tip of her left thumb, her right hand still being occupied by holding the suppressed pistol. There was a deeply ingrained and largely justified prejudice against Traveling Folk in British people, especially those who lived in the countryside, that would have directed suspicion against Garridan Rootham and his group. Others would have taken his side, precisely because he was the victim of long-standing prejudice. Angel felt neither motivation and viewed the question with the ice-cold lack of humanity that was her trademark. "People don't always behave logically of course. Somebody from his group might easily have stolen some relics from the finds almost by force of habit. But, that doesn't ring true to me. I think if that had happened and Garry had caught them, he would have handed them over and returned the finds."
"I agree. He's too proud of establishing that business and the relative prosperity it brings, to want it risked. Let's not forget the two who tried to get to Raw Eddie in his hospital room. We haven't seen any trace of either of them here or at the camping site. We need to check with your security team to see if any of the pictures they took are familiar."
Angel grinned at being one step ahead. "Already have. I gave Mao-lee a picture of the man who posed as Eddie's father and she ran image recognition against the pictures she had taken. No matches."
"What about the woman with him?"
There was a long silence from Angel followed by a slightly embarrassed reply that made Conrad chuckle to himself. "I'll get it seen to first thing tomorrow."
Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
Angel had solemnly presented their identity cards at the main entry point to the site and, equally solemnly, they had been validated, Then the gate had been lifted to allow them through. Everybody on the security team had recognized Angel of course and most knew Conrad by sight or reputation. Nevertheless, they had taken as much care over them as everybody else who wanted to enter the site. There was a significant difference between recognition and verification and the gate guards were well aware of it.
"You're heading over to the Central Administration Hut?" Angel had parked their car just outside that building so it was hardly anything more than a formal question. "I'm going over to my trench to do some more digging."
"Don't overdo it." Conrad sounded cautionary but he could see how much fitter Angel was now compared with their time on the cruise ship. For the first time since St Peter's Square, she was back to being the hard body she had been before she had fought her desperate battle against ricin poisoning.
"Conrad, you know if something's worth doing, it's worth doing to excess." Angel smiled at him. The line she had just used was one of Igrat's and Conrad had recognized it instantly. He gave her an ironic salute and disappeared into the hut to update their boards.
The atmosphere in the dig had changed slightly now that the security guards were on site and watching over the students. The air of tension had gone and cheerfulness once more permeated the community. To her amusement, Angel saw one of the female students flirting with a guard who had been walking past her trench. To seek and preserve public favor by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humor, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life and public welfare. Angel wondered if Chris Keeble had realized what he was starting when he had shown Angel Sir Robert Peel's "Principles of Policing" almost a decade ago. Even then, Angel had realized that they applied to the successful operation of organized crime just as much as to policing a community and she had already re-written them to cover the operations of the 14K. She had been impressed by how few changes were needed. One day, she knew, the 'Angelic Principles' would become as much part of Triad operations as the '36 Oaths'.
"How is it going, younger brother?" Angel looked at Chao Zong-xian and the student he was speaking with. Mao-lee had described him as smart, creative, and unconventional, features that made him highly productive and driven. In other words, he had the makings of a first-class Sai-Lo.
"Eldest sister! Cousin Barbara was telling me about her work here. It must be so fascinating to learn about our ancestors like this." Neither Angel nor Chao gave a hint that the off-hand reference had been deliberately created to play to European perceptions of the stereotypical Chinese fixation with their ancestors. It was a small touch intended to create a shared basis for friendly relations between the archeological team and the Triad guards.
"I'm Barbara Wilde." The girl smiled up at Angel. "This trench is exploring the wall buried here. We're trying to decide how it was built. We have both earthwork and stone, the question is how are they integrated?"
"Let me guess. Wild Barbie? I'm Angel."
"That's right, that's me. Pleased to meet you, Angel. Penny told me you were the one who thought there might be a wall here. That was a good catch."
"Thank you." Angel gave an appreciative and completely fake smile. "I would like to know how your work here progresses. Perhaps I can come over some time and you can tell me more? And, perhaps, show me some of the most interesting parts?"
She turned to Chao. "I must get back to my own trench now. Younger brother, Sister Mao-lee tells me your work here is most satisfactory. This is pleasing."
Angel walked across the site, looking at the extensive digging work that was taking place. It was obvious that the rate of work had picked up significantly although she suspected the degree of care had remained the same. The area she had been working on the day before yesterday was typical of the progress that had been made. Her own trench had now been expanded to open the point where the perimeter wall joined the inner gatehouse. A second trench had been dug at 90 degrees to it and that had confirmed Hardy's theory that the two wheelhouses forming the gatehouse were orientated at 90 degrees to the run of the wall.
"Hey, Angel, welcome back!" Prema was in the gap between the two wheelhouses. "How's the investigation going? Or shouldn't I ask?"
"We're basically eliminating possibilities right now. By the way, have you been told there are some experts coming up with metal detectors to help us?"
Prema and Penny nodded, the other workers shook their heads. Looking around, Angel noted something else; when she'd been working here before, the other girls had been wearing long-sleeved T-shirts and normal-length jeans. Now they had changed to sleeveless spaghetti-strap tops and shorts. Penny caught her glance. "When we were told there were security guards coming to look after us, it was mentioned that taking photographs and film of them would be . . . . undesirable. So, all us girls all had a private little meeting of our own and we decided if we showed a bit more skin, the cameramen would concentrate on us, not your people."
Angel laughed in genuine amusement and appreciation of the thought. She was surprised by realizing she had valued the action taken without having Conrad to prompt her. "That's really good. And helpful. Please spread the word around that we feel privileged by you all making the effort to help us. Not many of our clients do that. Found anything good yet?"
"Everything is good, Angel. That's the first lesson. A find may be simple and boring but if it's in the right place and context it can solve a mystery. But, we may have found a real treasure. Come and look at this."
She and Prema led Angel over to the table where the finds were being collected. She checked a list, found a number and picked up the appropriate box. "Now, this is incredible. Really, really valuable."
Inside the box was a heavy bronze object shaped a bit like a key with a long shaft and a wide loop at one end. It was large and very strongly made. Angel was confused; she couldn’t understand what it was or why everybody was so excited over it.
Prema explained. "The earliest doors and gates were made by taking a single slab of wood or stone and drilling two holes in the side, one near the top, the other almost at the bottom. Then, one of these pins would be hammered into the hole so that it was wedged firmly into place. That sounds simple but if the hole is too big or the pin too thin, it'll be loose and fall out. If the hole is too small or the pin too large, the wood or stone will split. Either means all the work will have been wasted so making these fit just right was a skilled job. Then, the builders would place lintels at the top and bottom that also had holes drilled in them. One end of a simple straight pin then gets fixed in the hole with the other end threaded through this loop. Once assembly is finished, the gate will pivot on the loop and pin."
Penny saw that Angel was still mystified by the excitement. "Angel, this is a gate. When you were first here, Phil said that there weren't gates back then. Well, that's not quite true, gates have been found back to 2000 BCE, but they were huge things for city walls, ceremonial buildings and so on. Finding them in a small settlement like this changes everything. It's one more example of the way this place is far in advance of its time."
That made Angel think. "Penny, could this whole place be some kind of hoax? If it's as out of the ordinary as you suggest, could somebody be setting us up?"
Prema shook her head. "Hoaxes do happen, more than we like to admit. Some of them elaborate and really well put together. This isn't one though. The whole site is under a six-foot layer of alluvial clay that has never been disturbed. That's why the context and stratification of a find is so important. We only found it because an RAF Valkyrie was doing a training run with a recon pack and it picked up some odd shadows on the ground. We've done dating checks on the treasure and all the finds are of the right age and the metal ones check out with content correct for the period.
"Wait a minute. So when you are describing this to each other, you'd refer to it as a treasure?"
"It's a find, but collectively we'd call a series of good finds as treasure."
Angel looked again at the gate pivot. "How much is this actually worth?"
"As an object? A few pounds, at most." On its own, out of context, it's just a piece of bronze. To us, a find like this is a more important piece of treasure than a jeweled brooch or gold necklace. We can analyze this metal and it will tell us when this was made and where it came from. People didn't travel far back then, the people who lived here probably never moved more than a mile or two from the place where they were born. If this came a long way, say from southern England or even France, then it shows that really serious trading was going on."
"But an outsider would hear you speaking about 'treasure' and assume you meant coins, golden rings and jewelry. Things that were worth a lot of money."
Penny and Prema exchanged glances, suddenly realizing what Angel was getting at. Penny got in first. "You think that somebody heard us talking about treasure and thought we meant valuable things, not relics that helped explain what this place was and how it worked."
Prema's mind was that of an archeologist, like a detective, she was used to fitting small pieces of evidence together. This time, she fitted all the parts together quickly and came up with a chilling answer. "Penny is right, somebody heard us talking about treasure and assumed we meant gold and silver and precious stones. Not the agricultural tools and related artefacts we actually recovered from the first roundhouse. They tried to rob it to make a big score, searched the roundhouse but didn’t find anything that fitted their definition of treasure. They came back the next night to continue the search but found Raw Eddie up here. Rather than do the hard work of searching, they tortured him to make him tell them where the 'treasure' was. Of course, he couldn’t tell them because there wasn't any. Then, they heard us running up and took off. The people who did that must be right in here with us."
"Yet must also be outsiders who didn’t understand the difference between your language and their language." Angel finished the story off for them. "There's only one group of people who know a little about what goes on here yet are around all the time. The TV crew."
"But some of them have been with us for years!" Penny seemed distraught at the idea.
"Some of them haven't." Prema had dropped her voice and there was a level of menace in her words. "The crew changes every year. Some leave, others come. Angel, I don’t want to tell your people their jobs, but shouldn’t you be looking at the members of the TV crew?”
Angel took no offense at a rank outsider suggesting things her people ought to do. “We are. And don’t hesitate to ask about things like that. All too often when we dig into something that went badly wrong, we find out it was because everybody had spotted a hole in the plan, but assumed it was so obvious that everybody else had spotted it as well. I screwed up last night, missed something obvious, and the warning saved us embarrassment.”
“And there speaks Lordly Angel.” Penny looked around at the dig team. “Mark those words well people.”
“So I’m Lordly Angel?” Angel was genuinely amused by that. “May I ask why?”
“It’s because you’re always assertive, confident and in-charge.” Prema was relieved that Angel wasn’t offended which showed she still had no idea how Angel’s mind worked. When she spoke again, the words came out in a rush. "All the girls admire you. We all wish you'd been here the night Raw Eddie got . . . ."
Prema started shuddering and tears were rolling down her cheeks. "We all heard, nobody could avoid hearing but we all just sat here and looked at each other. Waiting for somebody to make the first move but nobody did and the screaming went on and on. Eventually, when we did do something, when the screaming had already stopped, we found him. It was too late, we all thought he was dead. Have you noticed none of us can look the others in the face?"
"There were probably five men attacking Eddie. At least. How many of you were there?"
Penny answered. "Three of us and four of the lads. Everybody else was down in the village."
"Seven unarmed kids. Now, exactly what would you have done, facing at least five armed and very violent men who have no hesitation about killing people?"
Penny and Prema looked at each other, bewildered. Angel followed it up. "Where I come from we had a story about a boy who had a pet dog. Every day the school bus came to collect the boy and the dog chased after it, trying to rescue his friend. Of course he never did. Then, one day, the school bus had to stop for roadworks and by a super canine effort, the dog caught the bus. Now, he faced a question. He'd caught it, what was he going to do with it? I can't tell you what the dog did but I can tell you what would have happened to you. Your lads would have been clubbed down and killed, before they even understood what they were up against. You wouldn't have been so lucky. You’d have been gang-raped, handed around from one man to the next. After they'd finished with you, they'd have caved your skulls in, the same way they tried to smash Eddie's. Only they'd have succeeded in killing you because our skulls are weaker than men's. You did the right thing by sitting still, hard but right.”
There was a long, long silence as the women imagined the scenes Angel had just described. Eventually Penny asked, very shyly. “If you had been here, Angel, would you have gone up there? What would you have done?”
“Given one of you my portable telephone so you could call for reinforcements. Then gone up there. But, remember I’ve got two pistols, 170 rounds of ammunition and I’ve done this kind of thing before. I’d move up as quietly as possible, get into a good position and open fire on the bad guys without any kind of warning. All of them would be dead before they realized what was happening. Whether that saved Eddie or not is another matter.” Angel thought about that and whether the answer she had given was true. It was now because a hired security team was on site and they were being paid to go in and Angel was duty-bound to support them. But the night Eddie had been attacked? Then, she had had no obligations to him and nothing to gain from helping him. Her mind veered away and she decided it was time to change the subject. “So, what’s Conrad’s nickname?”
“Lucky Conrad. Everybody knows you protect him and we all think that makes him a very lucky man.” That caused a burst of laughter and dispelled the air of horror that had shadowed the conversation.
Angel nodded in acknowledgement. She was about to take her leave of the group to convey the information she had just discovered to Conrad when a thought occurred to her. “The man in charge of the TV program here? I assume he has a nickname as well?”
“Richard Baldwin? Yeah, he’s had one for a long time and he really hates it. He’s Bald Rick.”
Re: 2008 - Eye of the Nighthawker
Chapter Seven
Central Administration Hut, Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"Conrad, if I told you we'd found treasure here, what do you think I meant?" Angel was looking around at the boards, realizing how a few additional bits of information could make everything look different.
"Bag of coins probably. I'd hope gold or silver ones, but more realistically bronze. I suppose some jewelry, rings and brooches or chain if we're lucky. Why?"
"That's what I would have thought as well. Only, it's not what the people here mean by treasure. Their terms of reference are completely different from ours. When they say they've found treasure, they mean things that are valuable to them, that show them the history of this place. How it worked, the timeline for the site and how people lived here. Whatever monetary value they may have is beside the point."
"That fits in with what Garry was saying. That the majority of the finds made on sites like this fetch only tiny amounts on the black market and the effort of stealing them is hardly worth what they bring in."
"That's not a bad definition of most street crime, Conrad. That’s why we got out of it." Angel shook her head. "Anyway, how's this for a theory of the crime? Raw Eddie is doing his thesis and discovers some artefacts in the roundhouse that seriously help him make his case. He describes them to his friends as 'treasure' and somebody in the TV crew overhears him and thinks of gold and jewels. The crook gets his mates together, they go up to the roundhouse and turn it over looking for what they mean by 'treasure'. Of course, they don’t find anything. So, the next night they go back to try again. Only Raw Eddy goes up there to guard his finds, they grab him and try to make him tell them where he found the 'treasure'. That doesn't take very long at all, probably only a handful of minutes, and after his legs have been broken and torn up, he convinces them that there is no treasure as they understand it. So, they try to kill him. The students are coming up to see what is happening by then, so the Nightwalkers leg it."
Conrad thought about it very carefully. "It fits all the evidence that we have and there are no obvious anomalies that I can see. The main problem is that we have absolutely no evidence to implicate any member or members of the TV crew."
"I know. To make matters worse, I don’t see any way we will get some, not in any way you'd want to know about. Or could be legitimately presented in a court." This was a problem Angel had anticipated and she already had a plan in place to deal with the situation. The problem was that she was quite sure Conrad wouldn't like it. She was saved from having to tell him about it by a knock on the door.
Chen Mao-lee was outside. "Eldest sister, could you and Zhēnxiàng come please? We have a matter that needs attention."
She led the way to the site first-aid post. There were enough minor injuries, mostly cuts and bruises, twisted joints and pulled muscles to stop the staff from getting bored but this time there was an urgency in their activity. The subject was one of the women from the Traveler group. She had a black eye, badly bleeding nose, bruised cheeks and her lips were split and swollen.
"Please explain to Angel what happened here." Mao-lee had a note of authority in her voice that she had lacked when she and Angel had worked together before.
Rootham was obviously boiling with anger. "Shimza took one of our Land rovers down to the village to get food and other stuff. She was loading up when some Nighthawkers bounced her. They gave her a good belting then told her if we didn’t get out of here, her kiddies would get the same. It were all over in a couple of minutes. Shimza came back here for help. As if we don’t have enough problems right now."
Angel said nothing but lifted an eyebrow. Rootham took the hint and continued. "The park we're staying at is closing at the end of the week. We have to find somewhere else. That ain't so easy."
"Yes, it is. We have plenty of space here. The University rents the whole field. You move your camper vans in here, solving your first problem." Penny had arrived at a run; injuries to a team member were an administrative matter after all. So was deciding who was allowed to park on the ground rented by the university.
"It also puts you within the security perimeter which solves your second problem." Mao-lee was making decisions and her voice rang with confidence. Angel reflected she had matured greatly since the North Somerset business two years earlier. Still needs seasoning, but she really is shaping up well.
"Until we find them bloody Nighthawkers and give them a thrashing." Rootham's raging anger slipped out.
"You will do nothing of the sort. Mao-lee and her people are serious professionals at this sort of thing. You will leave dealing with this to her." Angel's voice was decisive and very obviously not to be disputed. The emphasis on the word 'will' had all the impact of a super-sized anvil dropped from one of SAC's highest-flying bombers. The absolute authority in her voice carried over to her next comment. "And you don’t know who is responsible yet; this might be Nighthawkers, it might not. You go after them and they aren't responsible for this, then you've just bought into a whole world of trouble. In fact, if a third party is involved, that may be what they want."
Rootham looked at Mao-lee and saw the SiG P-225 holstered at her waist. It hadn't really registered with him before. She intercepted the glance. "We have three shifts, one on guard, one ready alert and one resting at any one time. We'll move around a bit so the ready-alert team is closer to your camp. Just let me know where you want to locate. We have three drones plus a spare. We keep one circling the dig at night, the other circling the camp. Again, let us know where you select and we'll enlarge the racetrack to keep watch."
"Watching us. You still don’t trust us traveling folk do you?" Rootham's voice was resigned rather than resentful.
Most people would have reacted to that with fervent and hypocritical denials. Angel just nodded. "Of course not. We don't know you. But, if something happens, those drones will tell us you weren't involved. Then, we'll start to trust you. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough." Rootham turned to Mao-lee. "Show us the best place for us to park Ma'am so you can get set up. And thank you."
"Garry, I want you and Shimza to look through our photographs of people and see if there is anybody she recognizes as one of the attackers." Angel thought for a second. "I doubt if there will be but we should try. This could be just a Nighthawkers vs Detectorist thing or even some local thugs throwing their weight about. And, if any of your people are going to town, tell us and we'll send somebody with them."
Back in the Central Administration Hut, Conrad took a brief, deep breath. "What do you make of that, Angel?"
"Threatening to work the brats in his family over if Rootham didn’t leave the area is pretty rough. Reminds me of the sort of thing the people who crippled Raw Eddie might do. Unprofessional."
Conrad blinked at Angel using the term that represented her strongest level of condemnation. In her eyes 'unprofessional' was the equivalent of what Conrad would describe as a mortal sin. "I agree. One thing that confuses me though is that the level of violence involved seems disproportionate to the likely gains. The one thing we are hearing over and over is that the monetary value of the finds likely to be made here are small and the income from illegal sales of those finds much smaller still. The impression I get is that Night hawking is a pocket-money thing, a chance for some hard-up locals to earn a couple of quid for a night's work. Yet we have vicious assaults, attempted murder and now threats of harming children."
"You know very well that people have been murdered for the shoes on their feet or the hat they wear. Or in revenge for insults so trivial nobody else is aware they even happened."
Conrad sighed softly to himself. Not for the first time, Angel's brutal realism had left him deeply saddened. Or, rather, he was deeply saddened by the knowledge she was right. Then a thought occurred to him. "If we had one standard of values in this site, it would be the value of knowledge, right?"
"Right."
"So, if somebody really wanted to get revenge on this community, they'd attack the knowledge they are acquiring."
"And that's just what the people behind this are doing." Angel had realized what Conrad was driving at. "That would fit threatening the detectorist's brats as well. With a small community like that, threatening the children is a deadly menace to their whole future. Scaring them off working this site is another way of attacking the knowledge gained here. I've got a feeling though that our friend Garry doesn’t scare easily."
"This doesn't affect the main question though. Who?" Conrad was primarily concerned at this point with the threats against the children. It set his 'defend the innocent' mindset warnings going at full blast.
"Based on what we have now, that TV crew. They fit the profile for what that's worth. We still have no evidence though."
"I'd say it's more accurate that we have the evidence but we haven't found it yet." Conrad pointed at an imposing file of computer printouts. "Humpty and Chris sent these up. They're the dates and details of Nighthawker robberies of archeological sites and the production and transmission dates of Archeology in Action TV shows. We're going to have to check through that lot, item by item."
Angel looked at the inches-high pile and sighed audibly. There were times when she regretted learning how to read properly and this was one of them. She sighed again, causing the pile of print-outs to ruffle slightly, then picked the top one up. "Pilot and first series of Archeology in Action. Recorded in April 1993 at Athelney in Somerset and shown in January 1994. Hey, isn’t Athelney near where we were working?"
"That's right. Half a dozen miles or so from Taunton and just down the road from Westonzoyland. Any word on how Sam is doing?"
"Very well, so I hear. Company is certainly doing well. You'll have to ask Mao-lee for details, she's based in Taunton when she isn’t doing security work like this. Any corresponding Nighthawker incidents?"
Conrad searched through the list. "No sign of one. Could have been unreported of course. I don't think Nighthawkers were seen as the problem then that they are now."
"Could be. We'll have to do a count of how many nighthawker incidents there have been in total. Of course, if Nighthawker incidents grew as the TV show gained viewership, that would be interesting in its own right. Now, second show, Ribchester in Lancashire, recorded September 1993, shown January 1994. Any hits?"
Once again, Conrad checked through the list for both dates, before shaking his head. "It's clear. Nothing. No incidents anywhere else either."
Angel had a pad and she divided the page into two columns. One was for nighthawker incidents in general, the other for those that might be linked to the television show. "All right. That's data by itself. Now, Much Wenlock in Shropshire. Who invents these names? Recorded early April 1993, broadcast late January 1994. That was a big find Conrad, they located the Baronial Hall."
"Still nothing. It's not surprising really, there are very few entries in the files back then. There's only one for January 1994 and that's not a metal detector thing, it’s a man with a spade in an old priory. He was cautioned and released. He claimed he was a local looking for truffles."
"Don’t pigs do that? All right let's keep going."
They were into 1996 and the fourth series before the first hit came up. Angel was utterly bored by this point and it showed in her voice. "Malton, North Yorkshire. Filmed July 1996, broadcast February 1997."
"And we have a hit. The dig found remnants of a 16th century manor house and identified it as a site that warranted additional exploration. In between the film being made and the episode shown on television, nighthawkers pillaged the site, destroying much of the archeology and removing an unknown number of relics. There's no proof of any connection to the show."
"Between recording and transmission? That suggests that if there is a connection, it's with the crew. Not outsiders watching the show."
"And the number of nighthawker incidents is slowly rising. So far, all we have is coincidence. Or some locals seeing the show being made and deciding to have a look."
"We'll see." Angel put down the fourth series file and reluctantly picked up the fifth. "Here we go. Series Five, a total of eight episodes. Starting with Richmond, Surrey, filmed July 1997, shown January 1998. Anything?"
"No nighthawker action there although there were five other incidents in that time period. Next?"
By the end of the series, three of the eight sites had been raided by nighthawkers, all in the period between the show being recorded and broadcast. That steady increase continued until the latest series was examined. Series 14 had 13 episodes with ten being pillaged after the initial work had been completed but before the shows were broadcast. In addition, the number of attacks had increased to about a quarter of the nighthawker total.
"Notice something else, Conrad? The attacks are getting more violent with each year. What happened to Raw Eddie isn’t unusual, it's just the latest development of a trend. If he survives, the next victim probably won’t."
Conrad looked up and rubbed his eyes, realizing how late it had become. At some point, Angel had quietly got up and switched the lights on. "Any word on Raw Eddie?"
Angel shook her head. "Still largely comatose. There is a lot of doubt if he'll come out at all. If he does, he'll never walk again. I know they said that about Isolda and she managed it but Eddie's in a lot worse condition. There's never been any problem with Isolda's legs, the problem is her spinal cord. Eddies legs are wrecked. The docs are still trying to piece the bones in his legs together but so much of what's left is splinters. I think they're at the point of giving up and amputating. Danger from marrow embolisms is too high to let this go on much longer."
"That's bad. Lady Florentia said he wanted to be a footballer too. Instead the best he can look forward to is a life in a wheelchair." Conrad's misery was almost tangible
Angel, though, was frowning. "Say that again, Conrad?"
"Wheelchair?"
"No, before that. About being a footballer and wanted to go professional. It may be a stupid game, but there’s a lot of money in professional sport and that makes it serious business. People who want in have to make the grade. Doesn't that mean he'd be really fit? And then there is all the digging that goes on up here. Conrad, heavy digging is a good way to exercise. Eddie wouldn't have been a weakling. Digging would have given him upper-body strength, training for football, or any other professional sport come to that, would mean is in a top percentile of strength. Football is just kicking an inflated pig around a muddy field so Eddie was probably light on his feet as well. So, if he ran, he'd almost certainly get away."
"That's why he was happy with going up there despite the risk. He saw himself as being fit enough to look after himself. So, if it had happened the way we thought, he'd have either fought, and probably quite well, or run away and left the attackers in the dust. Depends on how many he saw." Conrad thought that over. "This makes things look a lot different."
"They blitzed him. They saw him coming, hid and then hit him all at once from different directions. He never got a chance to fight. Or to run. There's another problem that's been worrying me, Conrad. I've talked to the girls here, trying to knock some sense into their heads, but their descriptions of what happened are pretty consistent. They fit an attack that was over fast, not a long, drawn-out one. They agonize over just sitting there and listening to the attack but I bet it seemed a lot longer than it really was. We've been getting this all wrong and have been since we first came here."
Conrad thought it over and saw what Angel was getting at. He had the same uneasy feeling that they’d allowed themselves to be channeled down a false path and had missed what had really happened. What made it worse was that it was an error he had strongly criticized others for making. "You're saying that breaking his legs like that wasn't trying to get information from him, it was something else. Are you saying they smashed his legs just for the hell of it?"
Angel nodded. "I think it looks that way. Whether we've been deliberately sent down the wrong path or it just happened, I don't know. I will say Humpty can be extremely devious when he wants to be."
"And we still can't identify the people responsible. The figures tell us that at least one person and probably more are working with whoever is behind these attacks and that they are probably from the television crew. Other than that, we really don't know any more than when we first came here.".
"We can't identify them, but perhaps we can persuade them to identify themselves." Angel held her breath; she really did have a strong feeling that Conrad wasn't going to like this.
There was a long silence while Conrad ran the permutations through his mind. Angel had been right, he didn’t like the obvious ideas at all. There was one though that he actually found quite attractive. "You mean set up something to steal, have one of the drones keeping watch and then arrest the nighthawkers when they come to steal it?"
"Yeah, that's it." Angel was watching Conrad cautiously.
"Works for me." Conrad saw the relief on her face and suddenly something fell into place. "A few days ago, you said that Khrungthep House had a whole industry making fake antiques. You've known it would come to this all along, didn’t you?"
"I knew it might. I think this was Plan M. The stuff arrived yesterday morning and I've had it tucked away. We need to do some prep though. Please call Phil, Penny and Mao-Lee over here. Very quietly."
An hour later, Hardy looked at the pile of 'relics' on the table. He shook his head, decisively. "Nah. Wahn't do it. This saht is too importahnt to salt."
"Phil's right, Angel. We salt this site with faked finds and the whole place will be discredited. We'll lose everything we worked for here."
"That's why I want you two to go through this load of junk and carefully list every single item with a detailed description of each. You're professionals, you know how careful that has to be. All the stuff here is imitation late Roman or Romano-Saxon so its way out of period. We'll bury the haul in one place and mark it carefully. Then, I'll sign your list and the placement map in my capacity as a police officer, Mao-lee, you sign it as the company representative of Dragon and Conrad, you as a Jesuit. Just for once your Churchie stuff is going to be useful. I've also got a receipt and a customs note that'll show this is all the junk we brought in. That should be enough to disprove any accusation of salting."
"Ah still dahn't lahk it." Hardy looked at the pile of fake relics with extreme doubt on his face. Conrad understood why, what was being suggested ran against every precept he had about his profession. It was a feeling that Conrad could sympathize with; he had had the same problems with his conscience ever since had had met Angel almost fifteen years before. And Hardy didn’t have the mantra of 'hate the sin but not the sinner' to fall back on.
"Suppose we don’t bury this on-site. Suppose we hide it a mile or two down the track that Mad Tom has been following? The initial story would be that somebody fleeing the disaster buried their valuables for safe-keeping and never went back to collect them. We do a routine scan along Tom's path and the detectorists spot it. They don’t even need to know what they're looking for." Penny looked around. "It'll make hiding it easier as well."
"Thaat wahl be fahn." Hardy still looked worried but he knew his precious site wouldn’t now be compromised. "Baht we own up as soon as we cahn. Tahl everybahdy thaht the stahf is fahk an wha we plahnted it. Agreed?"
"Oh yes. Or, once it's found, we can say it was a practical joke by some students from another school, and they couldn’t get to our site because of the security people. They gave us the list of what they buried and we checked it off against the haul." Angel sounded quite happy which made Conrad wonder what else she was up to.
Central Administration Hut, Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"Conrad, if I told you we'd found treasure here, what do you think I meant?" Angel was looking around at the boards, realizing how a few additional bits of information could make everything look different.
"Bag of coins probably. I'd hope gold or silver ones, but more realistically bronze. I suppose some jewelry, rings and brooches or chain if we're lucky. Why?"
"That's what I would have thought as well. Only, it's not what the people here mean by treasure. Their terms of reference are completely different from ours. When they say they've found treasure, they mean things that are valuable to them, that show them the history of this place. How it worked, the timeline for the site and how people lived here. Whatever monetary value they may have is beside the point."
"That fits in with what Garry was saying. That the majority of the finds made on sites like this fetch only tiny amounts on the black market and the effort of stealing them is hardly worth what they bring in."
"That's not a bad definition of most street crime, Conrad. That’s why we got out of it." Angel shook her head. "Anyway, how's this for a theory of the crime? Raw Eddie is doing his thesis and discovers some artefacts in the roundhouse that seriously help him make his case. He describes them to his friends as 'treasure' and somebody in the TV crew overhears him and thinks of gold and jewels. The crook gets his mates together, they go up to the roundhouse and turn it over looking for what they mean by 'treasure'. Of course, they don’t find anything. So, the next night they go back to try again. Only Raw Eddy goes up there to guard his finds, they grab him and try to make him tell them where he found the 'treasure'. That doesn't take very long at all, probably only a handful of minutes, and after his legs have been broken and torn up, he convinces them that there is no treasure as they understand it. So, they try to kill him. The students are coming up to see what is happening by then, so the Nightwalkers leg it."
Conrad thought about it very carefully. "It fits all the evidence that we have and there are no obvious anomalies that I can see. The main problem is that we have absolutely no evidence to implicate any member or members of the TV crew."
"I know. To make matters worse, I don’t see any way we will get some, not in any way you'd want to know about. Or could be legitimately presented in a court." This was a problem Angel had anticipated and she already had a plan in place to deal with the situation. The problem was that she was quite sure Conrad wouldn't like it. She was saved from having to tell him about it by a knock on the door.
Chen Mao-lee was outside. "Eldest sister, could you and Zhēnxiàng come please? We have a matter that needs attention."
She led the way to the site first-aid post. There were enough minor injuries, mostly cuts and bruises, twisted joints and pulled muscles to stop the staff from getting bored but this time there was an urgency in their activity. The subject was one of the women from the Traveler group. She had a black eye, badly bleeding nose, bruised cheeks and her lips were split and swollen.
"Please explain to Angel what happened here." Mao-lee had a note of authority in her voice that she had lacked when she and Angel had worked together before.
Rootham was obviously boiling with anger. "Shimza took one of our Land rovers down to the village to get food and other stuff. She was loading up when some Nighthawkers bounced her. They gave her a good belting then told her if we didn’t get out of here, her kiddies would get the same. It were all over in a couple of minutes. Shimza came back here for help. As if we don’t have enough problems right now."
Angel said nothing but lifted an eyebrow. Rootham took the hint and continued. "The park we're staying at is closing at the end of the week. We have to find somewhere else. That ain't so easy."
"Yes, it is. We have plenty of space here. The University rents the whole field. You move your camper vans in here, solving your first problem." Penny had arrived at a run; injuries to a team member were an administrative matter after all. So was deciding who was allowed to park on the ground rented by the university.
"It also puts you within the security perimeter which solves your second problem." Mao-lee was making decisions and her voice rang with confidence. Angel reflected she had matured greatly since the North Somerset business two years earlier. Still needs seasoning, but she really is shaping up well.
"Until we find them bloody Nighthawkers and give them a thrashing." Rootham's raging anger slipped out.
"You will do nothing of the sort. Mao-lee and her people are serious professionals at this sort of thing. You will leave dealing with this to her." Angel's voice was decisive and very obviously not to be disputed. The emphasis on the word 'will' had all the impact of a super-sized anvil dropped from one of SAC's highest-flying bombers. The absolute authority in her voice carried over to her next comment. "And you don’t know who is responsible yet; this might be Nighthawkers, it might not. You go after them and they aren't responsible for this, then you've just bought into a whole world of trouble. In fact, if a third party is involved, that may be what they want."
Rootham looked at Mao-lee and saw the SiG P-225 holstered at her waist. It hadn't really registered with him before. She intercepted the glance. "We have three shifts, one on guard, one ready alert and one resting at any one time. We'll move around a bit so the ready-alert team is closer to your camp. Just let me know where you want to locate. We have three drones plus a spare. We keep one circling the dig at night, the other circling the camp. Again, let us know where you select and we'll enlarge the racetrack to keep watch."
"Watching us. You still don’t trust us traveling folk do you?" Rootham's voice was resigned rather than resentful.
Most people would have reacted to that with fervent and hypocritical denials. Angel just nodded. "Of course not. We don't know you. But, if something happens, those drones will tell us you weren't involved. Then, we'll start to trust you. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough." Rootham turned to Mao-lee. "Show us the best place for us to park Ma'am so you can get set up. And thank you."
"Garry, I want you and Shimza to look through our photographs of people and see if there is anybody she recognizes as one of the attackers." Angel thought for a second. "I doubt if there will be but we should try. This could be just a Nighthawkers vs Detectorist thing or even some local thugs throwing their weight about. And, if any of your people are going to town, tell us and we'll send somebody with them."
Back in the Central Administration Hut, Conrad took a brief, deep breath. "What do you make of that, Angel?"
"Threatening to work the brats in his family over if Rootham didn’t leave the area is pretty rough. Reminds me of the sort of thing the people who crippled Raw Eddie might do. Unprofessional."
Conrad blinked at Angel using the term that represented her strongest level of condemnation. In her eyes 'unprofessional' was the equivalent of what Conrad would describe as a mortal sin. "I agree. One thing that confuses me though is that the level of violence involved seems disproportionate to the likely gains. The one thing we are hearing over and over is that the monetary value of the finds likely to be made here are small and the income from illegal sales of those finds much smaller still. The impression I get is that Night hawking is a pocket-money thing, a chance for some hard-up locals to earn a couple of quid for a night's work. Yet we have vicious assaults, attempted murder and now threats of harming children."
"You know very well that people have been murdered for the shoes on their feet or the hat they wear. Or in revenge for insults so trivial nobody else is aware they even happened."
Conrad sighed softly to himself. Not for the first time, Angel's brutal realism had left him deeply saddened. Or, rather, he was deeply saddened by the knowledge she was right. Then a thought occurred to him. "If we had one standard of values in this site, it would be the value of knowledge, right?"
"Right."
"So, if somebody really wanted to get revenge on this community, they'd attack the knowledge they are acquiring."
"And that's just what the people behind this are doing." Angel had realized what Conrad was driving at. "That would fit threatening the detectorist's brats as well. With a small community like that, threatening the children is a deadly menace to their whole future. Scaring them off working this site is another way of attacking the knowledge gained here. I've got a feeling though that our friend Garry doesn’t scare easily."
"This doesn't affect the main question though. Who?" Conrad was primarily concerned at this point with the threats against the children. It set his 'defend the innocent' mindset warnings going at full blast.
"Based on what we have now, that TV crew. They fit the profile for what that's worth. We still have no evidence though."
"I'd say it's more accurate that we have the evidence but we haven't found it yet." Conrad pointed at an imposing file of computer printouts. "Humpty and Chris sent these up. They're the dates and details of Nighthawker robberies of archeological sites and the production and transmission dates of Archeology in Action TV shows. We're going to have to check through that lot, item by item."
Angel looked at the inches-high pile and sighed audibly. There were times when she regretted learning how to read properly and this was one of them. She sighed again, causing the pile of print-outs to ruffle slightly, then picked the top one up. "Pilot and first series of Archeology in Action. Recorded in April 1993 at Athelney in Somerset and shown in January 1994. Hey, isn’t Athelney near where we were working?"
"That's right. Half a dozen miles or so from Taunton and just down the road from Westonzoyland. Any word on how Sam is doing?"
"Very well, so I hear. Company is certainly doing well. You'll have to ask Mao-lee for details, she's based in Taunton when she isn’t doing security work like this. Any corresponding Nighthawker incidents?"
Conrad searched through the list. "No sign of one. Could have been unreported of course. I don't think Nighthawkers were seen as the problem then that they are now."
"Could be. We'll have to do a count of how many nighthawker incidents there have been in total. Of course, if Nighthawker incidents grew as the TV show gained viewership, that would be interesting in its own right. Now, second show, Ribchester in Lancashire, recorded September 1993, shown January 1994. Any hits?"
Once again, Conrad checked through the list for both dates, before shaking his head. "It's clear. Nothing. No incidents anywhere else either."
Angel had a pad and she divided the page into two columns. One was for nighthawker incidents in general, the other for those that might be linked to the television show. "All right. That's data by itself. Now, Much Wenlock in Shropshire. Who invents these names? Recorded early April 1993, broadcast late January 1994. That was a big find Conrad, they located the Baronial Hall."
"Still nothing. It's not surprising really, there are very few entries in the files back then. There's only one for January 1994 and that's not a metal detector thing, it’s a man with a spade in an old priory. He was cautioned and released. He claimed he was a local looking for truffles."
"Don’t pigs do that? All right let's keep going."
They were into 1996 and the fourth series before the first hit came up. Angel was utterly bored by this point and it showed in her voice. "Malton, North Yorkshire. Filmed July 1996, broadcast February 1997."
"And we have a hit. The dig found remnants of a 16th century manor house and identified it as a site that warranted additional exploration. In between the film being made and the episode shown on television, nighthawkers pillaged the site, destroying much of the archeology and removing an unknown number of relics. There's no proof of any connection to the show."
"Between recording and transmission? That suggests that if there is a connection, it's with the crew. Not outsiders watching the show."
"And the number of nighthawker incidents is slowly rising. So far, all we have is coincidence. Or some locals seeing the show being made and deciding to have a look."
"We'll see." Angel put down the fourth series file and reluctantly picked up the fifth. "Here we go. Series Five, a total of eight episodes. Starting with Richmond, Surrey, filmed July 1997, shown January 1998. Anything?"
"No nighthawker action there although there were five other incidents in that time period. Next?"
By the end of the series, three of the eight sites had been raided by nighthawkers, all in the period between the show being recorded and broadcast. That steady increase continued until the latest series was examined. Series 14 had 13 episodes with ten being pillaged after the initial work had been completed but before the shows were broadcast. In addition, the number of attacks had increased to about a quarter of the nighthawker total.
"Notice something else, Conrad? The attacks are getting more violent with each year. What happened to Raw Eddie isn’t unusual, it's just the latest development of a trend. If he survives, the next victim probably won’t."
Conrad looked up and rubbed his eyes, realizing how late it had become. At some point, Angel had quietly got up and switched the lights on. "Any word on Raw Eddie?"
Angel shook her head. "Still largely comatose. There is a lot of doubt if he'll come out at all. If he does, he'll never walk again. I know they said that about Isolda and she managed it but Eddie's in a lot worse condition. There's never been any problem with Isolda's legs, the problem is her spinal cord. Eddies legs are wrecked. The docs are still trying to piece the bones in his legs together but so much of what's left is splinters. I think they're at the point of giving up and amputating. Danger from marrow embolisms is too high to let this go on much longer."
"That's bad. Lady Florentia said he wanted to be a footballer too. Instead the best he can look forward to is a life in a wheelchair." Conrad's misery was almost tangible
Angel, though, was frowning. "Say that again, Conrad?"
"Wheelchair?"
"No, before that. About being a footballer and wanted to go professional. It may be a stupid game, but there’s a lot of money in professional sport and that makes it serious business. People who want in have to make the grade. Doesn't that mean he'd be really fit? And then there is all the digging that goes on up here. Conrad, heavy digging is a good way to exercise. Eddie wouldn't have been a weakling. Digging would have given him upper-body strength, training for football, or any other professional sport come to that, would mean is in a top percentile of strength. Football is just kicking an inflated pig around a muddy field so Eddie was probably light on his feet as well. So, if he ran, he'd almost certainly get away."
"That's why he was happy with going up there despite the risk. He saw himself as being fit enough to look after himself. So, if it had happened the way we thought, he'd have either fought, and probably quite well, or run away and left the attackers in the dust. Depends on how many he saw." Conrad thought that over. "This makes things look a lot different."
"They blitzed him. They saw him coming, hid and then hit him all at once from different directions. He never got a chance to fight. Or to run. There's another problem that's been worrying me, Conrad. I've talked to the girls here, trying to knock some sense into their heads, but their descriptions of what happened are pretty consistent. They fit an attack that was over fast, not a long, drawn-out one. They agonize over just sitting there and listening to the attack but I bet it seemed a lot longer than it really was. We've been getting this all wrong and have been since we first came here."
Conrad thought it over and saw what Angel was getting at. He had the same uneasy feeling that they’d allowed themselves to be channeled down a false path and had missed what had really happened. What made it worse was that it was an error he had strongly criticized others for making. "You're saying that breaking his legs like that wasn't trying to get information from him, it was something else. Are you saying they smashed his legs just for the hell of it?"
Angel nodded. "I think it looks that way. Whether we've been deliberately sent down the wrong path or it just happened, I don't know. I will say Humpty can be extremely devious when he wants to be."
"And we still can't identify the people responsible. The figures tell us that at least one person and probably more are working with whoever is behind these attacks and that they are probably from the television crew. Other than that, we really don't know any more than when we first came here.".
"We can't identify them, but perhaps we can persuade them to identify themselves." Angel held her breath; she really did have a strong feeling that Conrad wasn't going to like this.
There was a long silence while Conrad ran the permutations through his mind. Angel had been right, he didn’t like the obvious ideas at all. There was one though that he actually found quite attractive. "You mean set up something to steal, have one of the drones keeping watch and then arrest the nighthawkers when they come to steal it?"
"Yeah, that's it." Angel was watching Conrad cautiously.
"Works for me." Conrad saw the relief on her face and suddenly something fell into place. "A few days ago, you said that Khrungthep House had a whole industry making fake antiques. You've known it would come to this all along, didn’t you?"
"I knew it might. I think this was Plan M. The stuff arrived yesterday morning and I've had it tucked away. We need to do some prep though. Please call Phil, Penny and Mao-Lee over here. Very quietly."
An hour later, Hardy looked at the pile of 'relics' on the table. He shook his head, decisively. "Nah. Wahn't do it. This saht is too importahnt to salt."
"Phil's right, Angel. We salt this site with faked finds and the whole place will be discredited. We'll lose everything we worked for here."
"That's why I want you two to go through this load of junk and carefully list every single item with a detailed description of each. You're professionals, you know how careful that has to be. All the stuff here is imitation late Roman or Romano-Saxon so its way out of period. We'll bury the haul in one place and mark it carefully. Then, I'll sign your list and the placement map in my capacity as a police officer, Mao-lee, you sign it as the company representative of Dragon and Conrad, you as a Jesuit. Just for once your Churchie stuff is going to be useful. I've also got a receipt and a customs note that'll show this is all the junk we brought in. That should be enough to disprove any accusation of salting."
"Ah still dahn't lahk it." Hardy looked at the pile of fake relics with extreme doubt on his face. Conrad understood why, what was being suggested ran against every precept he had about his profession. It was a feeling that Conrad could sympathize with; he had had the same problems with his conscience ever since had had met Angel almost fifteen years before. And Hardy didn’t have the mantra of 'hate the sin but not the sinner' to fall back on.
"Suppose we don’t bury this on-site. Suppose we hide it a mile or two down the track that Mad Tom has been following? The initial story would be that somebody fleeing the disaster buried their valuables for safe-keeping and never went back to collect them. We do a routine scan along Tom's path and the detectorists spot it. They don’t even need to know what they're looking for." Penny looked around. "It'll make hiding it easier as well."
"Thaat wahl be fahn." Hardy still looked worried but he knew his precious site wouldn’t now be compromised. "Baht we own up as soon as we cahn. Tahl everybahdy thaht the stahf is fahk an wha we plahnted it. Agreed?"
"Oh yes. Or, once it's found, we can say it was a practical joke by some students from another school, and they couldn’t get to our site because of the security people. They gave us the list of what they buried and we checked it off against the haul." Angel sounded quite happy which made Conrad wonder what else she was up to.
Re: 2008 - Eye of the Nighthawker
Chapter Eight
The Gatehouse, Washingborough Castle, Lincolnshire.
Angel looked at the trench that had been dug across the opening of the gatehouse. Her own original effort had been lost, subsumed within the trench that showed the curved walls of the two gatehouse wheelhouses and the lower stone lintel that joined them. To the archeologists delight, the holes where the heavy bronze pins for the gates had been set were still clearly visible. What was even more impressive was that the wheelhouses themselves were higher than originally thought and still in reasonably good condition. There was also no evidence that they had ever had roofs which suggested they were purely fortifications and had no residential functions.
"If we half-close our eyes, we could imagine people outside trying to break the gates down while the men in the wheelhouses were fighting them with spears from the walls and shot thrown from slings." Mad Tom was looking at the buildings and trying to visualize what the place had looked like when it was complete and above-ground. "I would guess the walls were about five feet tall. I think the RAF aircraft saw the shadows of the track approaching the outer gatehouse. We had no idea this was here, none at all. It was all hidden under that layer of clay."
"Tom, I hate to ask this but is there any possibility this is some sort of elaborate practical joke?" Conrad verbalized the question that had been tormenting him ever since the anomalous nature of the Castle had been fully understood. In his experience, it was the sort of thing that either Apollo or Loki might have come up with and he knew all too well that Loki's practical 'jokes' often got people hurt.
"Phil and I both looked into that when nature of this place first became apparent. It's so unusual that a hoax was the most likely explanation. It isn’t though, its genuine. The clay layer alone proves that. If this place had been dug at any time, the traces would be unmistakable. Angel, you saw how homogenous the soil is when you dug your initial trench here. The same thick, heavy clay ruined this area for farming. Normally alluvial mud is good farmland but the dense clay here is the exception. It set to a solid air-proof seal."
"And I suspect superstition had a lot to do with people avoiding the area." Conrad knew from bitter experience how strong superstitions could be and how easily they could start. "There was a thriving community here, it was wiped out overnight and swallowed without trace. Afterwards, nothing would grow here so the people assumed it was haunted by ghosts or something and stayed away. It wouldn’t be long before the origin of the story was lost and people simply remembered "it's haunted by ghosts."
"Or minotaurs." Angel added. "We ought to look at that cave sometime."
Tom looked around and saw the detectorists assembling. "Great, let's get started, Garry, what we need your people to do is to walk back along the most likely route of the track. The clay is too deep for your metal detectors here but we think it gets thinner as we go that way. If we're right, the castle sat in a shallow hollow, the significance of that we are not quite sure of, but the lines of the trees and the lay of the fields all suggest the track is there. You just got to find it and you'll start to pick up signs once the clay layer goes away."
"Of a track?" Angel couldn’t see how that would work.
Garry smiled at her, reveling in the knowledge that his expertise was valued. "That's right, Angel. The tracks were surfaced with lots of hard stones so it would stay passable in winter. The most common stones used had just enough iron content to set off our detectors. So, a string of faint hits could be a track."
Angel filed that piece of information away for future use. She had no idea when or if it would be useful but it might be. Meanwhile, Rootham marshaled his detectorists into a line that crossed the suggested path of the ancient track. His first step was to take a detector and to over the ground exposed by the dig near the gates. Sure enough, he was rewarded by a series of hits. A few seconds work with a trowel exposed the stones that had caused the response. "We're in luck people. Ferrous ore in some of the surfacing stones. Time to get started."
"While this is going on, Conrad, we should have a look at the Minotaur's Cave. I'm always interested in places the local people are reluctant to visit. Does anybody know how to get there?" Angel looked around at the archeological gathering. To her secret pleasure, Richard Baldwin had arrived and his crew were filming Rootham's detectorists starting to trace the path of the access track.
"I can take you up." Penny extricated herself from the group of spectators and joined Conrad and Angel. "Most of the way, anyway. We'll have to go along Fen Road for a few miles until it does a really sharp right turn. There's a small parking area there, big enough for two or three cars at most, and we would have to walk the rest of the way. Another half-mile or so."
"Could I come along as well? Phil can supervise here. He's the best site-work manager in the country." Mad Tom had made sure that Rootham and his crew had the estimated track clearly marked on their maps and there really wasn't very much left for him to do until the results came in.
"You'll have to ride in the back with me." Conrad smiled gently as he made the invitation. "You've no bad memories of riding in the back of police cars do you?"
"Umm, can I plead the Fifth Amendment?" Tom seemed slightly embarrassed.
"Not here in Britain you can't." Penny said sweetly. "Although Angel is an American so you'd probably be better off confessing now before she nukes you."
"You've never seen Angel clearing a room full of armed men, have you?" Conrad sneaked a smile at Angel, advising her that this was just friendly banter. "Nukes would cause a lot fewer casualties."
"Keep telling people that a lone person in a room full of enemies has a hell of an advantage over those enemies. In those circumstances, keep moving and you're pretty safe. Unless you're one of the enemies of course." Angel proudly remembered the bar full of Glaswegian gangsters she'd taken out. She regarded that as a highly professional achievement even by her standards.
Penny suddenly sounded very tentative. "Angel, does getting shot hurt?"
"Unless you're killed instantly, yes. It's numb for a second or so but when the air gets in, the whole wound track burns like fire. Take a word of advice, its usually better not to get shot." They'd reached Angel's police car by then. Conrad opened the door for Angel while Tom did the same for Penny, then the two men got into the back seat. To Mad Tom's surprise it was a standard passenger seat.
"Staff use, not a patrol cruiser." Angel explained. "We got the full police interceptor set though. Lights, sirens, ram bars at the front, tuned-up V8 engine, beefed up suspension and double battery."
"Can we use the lights and sirens?" Penny sounded unduly hopeful.
Angel shook her head. "Better not to. If somebody goes off the road trying to get out of our way, we could get sued. We'll just take it normally. You'd be surprised how law-abiding everybody will be when they see us though."
Mad Tom had to admit that Angel was right. She didn’t need the emergency lights or siren to make everybody polite and law-abiding. Just the sight of a white Rover with the standard police 'jam sandwich' stripes down the side was enough. After a few miles, Penny pointed to a small off-turning that led to a patch of cleared ground. "Here we are. Now, there should be a path marked 'Minotaur's Mound' heading due north."
There was, although the path was barely worth of the name. It was a simple strip of infrequently-mown rough-land between two fields and no more than about three feet wide. After about three hundred yards, there was a turning off to the right, an even narrower and less well-kept footpath, again following the boundary between two fields. A prominent sign by the entrance read. "Hazardous footing. Enter at own risk."
“Look how the footpaths follow the old field divisions. For all the time that has passed, the field divisions mostly remain untouched.” Mad Tom was in his element. “Back in the 14th century, my ancestors owned a field in a small village in Somerset. It's changed hands many times since then of course but its boundaries are still identical to the time my ancestors owned it.”
"From here on in, we're in something really weird." Penny looked around carefully. "We're less than four feet above sea level here; see how the woods tower over us? We're about 400 feet from the peak of the hill and its 80 feet up. It's rocky and there are plenty of places you could break an ankle. So watch where you put your feet."
"This hill doesn't make any sort of geological sense at all." Tom looked around. "We're on flat arable land with no great slope to it, that's why the river wanders around so much. And yet we've got this damn great limestone pile suddenly coming out of nowhere. It doesn't get any higher than this until we're into Lincoln itself. The odd thing is, there's high ground between us and the sea to our east and the ground also picks up in height once we get a couple of miles north of here. There's a theory that this whole area was once an extension of the Fens."
"That's a marshy area south of here. King John lost all his treasure there when his wagons were caught by an unexpected high tide." Penny explained for Angel's benefit. "The Fens are believed to be the remnant of a much larger salt-water marsh that is slowly drying out. At the time when the castle was built, the ground would have been a couple of feet lower and a lot wetter. That might be why it flooded so fast."
"There's another theory that the Humber valley once ran all the way south to the Wash and the coastline originally passed through Lincoln. That suggests the city got started as a port. The area between Skegness, Grimsby and Scunthorpe would have been an island with Lincoln being the access to it." Tom thought carefully. "That's really controversial, although there is precedent for it. The tip of Kent was once an island, the Isle of Thanet, but the strait between it and the mainland silted up and eventually vanished completely. What we do know is that the North Sea covers a lot of what was dry land. It's called Doggerland now and the Navy has mapped villages and roads on the sea bed. If we assume the island theory is correct, then the area around Skegness and Grimsby would have been the last remnant of Doggerland as the easternmost areas were flooded."
"Doesn't that contradict the idea that the area around our castle was lower and wetter then?" Angel looked up the narrow, nearly overgrown path towards the summit of the hill. "How high did you say this hill is?"
"Eighty feet. The idea is that the land was rising due to rebound as the weight of the ice was taken off it but the sea level was rising as well as the water from the ice melting refilled the sea. It was an odd sort of race made more so by the fact that what became Britain was pivoting. The ice-shield during the last glaciation ended at the Humber Estuary and that's the pivot point. North of the Humber is rising, south of the Humber is sinking. None of that, though, explains this hill."
"A word of warning." Penny had seen the entrance to the cave ahead through the trees on the hill. "This cave is seriously dangerous quite apart from anything that might be living there. That's why it's gated off and the gate very securely locked. It's limestone and there's probably a network of caves down there that may go on for miles. Nobody knows but get lost down there and there's a good chance you'll never find the way out. Also, there may be potholes or rock slides. So we stick together and don’t go exploring. I believe that's where the minotaur legend came from. Kids went in there to explore and were never seen again. So, obviously 'the minotaurs ate them.' Good way of stopping kids going in there."
Angel nodded and checked the two powerful, wide-beam flashlights she had brought from her police car. She'd also brought a pair of spare batteries just in case. "If it's gated and locked, how do we get in?"
"I've got a set of keys. A detailed geological study of the Minotaur's Cave is on our Departmental list of unfunded priorities."
"Fortunately, geologists are completely indigestible so they'll be quite safe." Penny was staring at the now clearly-visible entrance to the cave. The heavy grating and gates that closed off the interior seemed eerily menacing.
Mad Tom approached them, sorting through his keys and found one that matched the direly menacing appearance of the gates. He was about to unlock them when Conrad held up his hand. "Hold it, Tom. I'd like to look at the lock first."
His inspection took only a few moments. "This lock was picked recently. See the scratches in the metal? Still bright. Somebody has been in here within the last few days."
"If it’s a minotaur, Angel, you hold him off while the rest of us make a run for it." Penny thought she was being droll before she saw Angel's face.
"Damn straight, Penny. Situation like that, or more likely if the bad guys are in there, you three take cover and keep out of my way. Conrad knows the drill."
"Too right." Conrad sounded rueful. "You've yelled at me often enough for not following it."
"I haven't yelled at you. I just instructed you in correct procedure. With emphasis. More significantly though, has anybody smelled the air?"
Angel watched her companions sniffing the air around the gate. Eventually Tom broke the concentration. "It smells bad. Not strongly bad but bad. Sweetish but rotten."
"Good boy. There's something dead in there. That means we need to be really careful. We were joking a moment ago, now it's serious. Conrad, Tom, you take the torches and flank me. Please do not silhouette me against the lights; keep to one side so that I'm in comparative dark but anybody or anything in there is blinded by the glare. All right? Then open up those gates and hit it."
The gate didn’t squeak or squeal as it opened. Angel suspected she wasn't the only one who appreciated the many virtues of WD40. The torches revealed a rough, irregular tunnel that led downwards into the blackness. It had a strange, inviting air about it. Tom looked at the formation and reached a preliminary verdict. "This looks to me that it’s the debris from a glacier. The glacier scrapes up rocks and so on as it moves down, then when it reaches the edge of the ice field, it melts and drops its load. So, we get this kind of jumbled structure with the caves being gaps between the rocks. Erosion over time does the rest. The question now is, what happened to the rest of it?"
"You know what's really interesting about this place, don't you, Tom." Only Conrad noted the amusement in Angel's voice. He could see what she was referring to though.
"What do you mean? This place is really interesting. We could learn a lot from a detailed study of the geological structures here."
"We could start with identifying the two bodies on the ground about six feet in front of you. If you'd tripped over them, I'd have to arrest you for interfering with a crime scene."
"Oh." Mad Tom looked away from the rock walls around him and saw the bodies. "Oh, oh, oh."
Conrad knelt beside them. "Man and woman, bodies decaying but I'm fairly sure they were the two who tried to get into Raw Eddie's hospital room."
"Take a look at the positions, Conrad. They were killed by shots from a gunman with a shotgun firing from near the gate. The male victim went down trying to shield the woman."
Conrad stood up and looked down on the two bodies. "And I had him placed as a wife-beater."
"Beat her and died trying to save her aren't incompatible, you should know that. People we need to get out of here, this is a crime scene." Angel looked around. "I can see at least one expended shotgun shell casing and there will be a lot more evidence we don’t want to contaminate any more than we have. And we need these bodies formally identified. I think our day trip is over.
Central Administration Hut, Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"Any news of the cave, Angel?" Penny had arrived with the printouts from the metal detector search.
"The two victims have been identified. Stephen Hatton and Catherine Mayhew, both known multiple, if minor, offenders in the Mercia Police Area. Both died from shotgun wounds to the chest, both were bound and then severely beaten, probably sometime before they were killed. We'll know a lot more when the full autopsy report comes in. They're both identified from the hospital security cameras as the couple who tried to see Raw Eddie in his room."
"As vicious as the attempt to kill Raw Eddie." There were tears trickling down Penny's face as she imagined what the last hours of the victims had been like. "Who are these people?"
"We'll probably never know, Penny." Angel took care to make that statement since lying always caused Conrad hours of anguish while it didn’t worry her in the slightest. In any case, Richard Baldwin had entered the center to see what the results of the detectorist sweep had been. Garry Rootham had also just arrived with a role of paper under his arm. Baldwin was eyeing it hungrily.
"How did it come out, Garry?" Tom was also eyeing the printout only he was still in shock from the discovery of the bodies.
"Really good, Tom. We should both ask for a bonus. Before I show you this, let me explain how it works. Every time we get a hit, we push a button on the detector. That records the exact Global Location Index position of the hit. We can also select whether it’s ferrous, non-ferrous or uncertain. Circle for the first, square for the second, triangle for the third. We upload all the data to the Cyberweb and go to a mapping and display tool in the statistics section of the Scientific Room that plots it all to scale. Then we download the result and print it out. Penny let us use your printer for that, it's much better than ours."
Rootham took a deep breath and unrolled the map. There was a thick river-like stream of circles that ran almost down the center of the paper with a scattering of squares, circles and triangles to either side of the main belt. Angel noted that Rootham had kept the top of the chart folded over. "All right, this big strip of ferrous. See it starts at your gates, this is the track in. There's a big gap where the clay is too deep for our detectors to pick anything up but we start to get scattered contacts here, where your clay layer is about three feet deep and they give us the full responses here where it's less than a foot. We have a solid track until we get to relatively recent plowing and the track is lost.
"That's ground that was enclosed in the 18th century. The track was probably destroyed by plowing then." Prema had come in and was staring at the chart. "The older individual field boundaries align with the track though. And they fade out where they hit the deep clay. I'd say this ties in nicely. We have a bona-fide trading community here."
"We got something better than that." Rootham was triumphant. "Take a gander at this."
'This' was a small but extremely dense cluster of circles, well off to one side of the main track. There was a collective intake of breath. "It's officially non-ferrous but an experienced detectorist can detect gold by the sound of the response. This is gold. You got yourself a hoard here. We need to report it to the authorities. I've got the forms in my caravan, Doctor Sexton, they need to be filled out by either you or Doctor Hardy."
"Their office is closed right now." Penny had glanced at her watch. "We'll have them ready first thing tomorrow, without fail. Until then, nobody says a word about this to anybody. Understood?"
The Gatehouse, Washingborough Castle, Lincolnshire.
Angel looked at the trench that had been dug across the opening of the gatehouse. Her own original effort had been lost, subsumed within the trench that showed the curved walls of the two gatehouse wheelhouses and the lower stone lintel that joined them. To the archeologists delight, the holes where the heavy bronze pins for the gates had been set were still clearly visible. What was even more impressive was that the wheelhouses themselves were higher than originally thought and still in reasonably good condition. There was also no evidence that they had ever had roofs which suggested they were purely fortifications and had no residential functions.
"If we half-close our eyes, we could imagine people outside trying to break the gates down while the men in the wheelhouses were fighting them with spears from the walls and shot thrown from slings." Mad Tom was looking at the buildings and trying to visualize what the place had looked like when it was complete and above-ground. "I would guess the walls were about five feet tall. I think the RAF aircraft saw the shadows of the track approaching the outer gatehouse. We had no idea this was here, none at all. It was all hidden under that layer of clay."
"Tom, I hate to ask this but is there any possibility this is some sort of elaborate practical joke?" Conrad verbalized the question that had been tormenting him ever since the anomalous nature of the Castle had been fully understood. In his experience, it was the sort of thing that either Apollo or Loki might have come up with and he knew all too well that Loki's practical 'jokes' often got people hurt.
"Phil and I both looked into that when nature of this place first became apparent. It's so unusual that a hoax was the most likely explanation. It isn’t though, its genuine. The clay layer alone proves that. If this place had been dug at any time, the traces would be unmistakable. Angel, you saw how homogenous the soil is when you dug your initial trench here. The same thick, heavy clay ruined this area for farming. Normally alluvial mud is good farmland but the dense clay here is the exception. It set to a solid air-proof seal."
"And I suspect superstition had a lot to do with people avoiding the area." Conrad knew from bitter experience how strong superstitions could be and how easily they could start. "There was a thriving community here, it was wiped out overnight and swallowed without trace. Afterwards, nothing would grow here so the people assumed it was haunted by ghosts or something and stayed away. It wouldn’t be long before the origin of the story was lost and people simply remembered "it's haunted by ghosts."
"Or minotaurs." Angel added. "We ought to look at that cave sometime."
Tom looked around and saw the detectorists assembling. "Great, let's get started, Garry, what we need your people to do is to walk back along the most likely route of the track. The clay is too deep for your metal detectors here but we think it gets thinner as we go that way. If we're right, the castle sat in a shallow hollow, the significance of that we are not quite sure of, but the lines of the trees and the lay of the fields all suggest the track is there. You just got to find it and you'll start to pick up signs once the clay layer goes away."
"Of a track?" Angel couldn’t see how that would work.
Garry smiled at her, reveling in the knowledge that his expertise was valued. "That's right, Angel. The tracks were surfaced with lots of hard stones so it would stay passable in winter. The most common stones used had just enough iron content to set off our detectors. So, a string of faint hits could be a track."
Angel filed that piece of information away for future use. She had no idea when or if it would be useful but it might be. Meanwhile, Rootham marshaled his detectorists into a line that crossed the suggested path of the ancient track. His first step was to take a detector and to over the ground exposed by the dig near the gates. Sure enough, he was rewarded by a series of hits. A few seconds work with a trowel exposed the stones that had caused the response. "We're in luck people. Ferrous ore in some of the surfacing stones. Time to get started."
"While this is going on, Conrad, we should have a look at the Minotaur's Cave. I'm always interested in places the local people are reluctant to visit. Does anybody know how to get there?" Angel looked around at the archeological gathering. To her secret pleasure, Richard Baldwin had arrived and his crew were filming Rootham's detectorists starting to trace the path of the access track.
"I can take you up." Penny extricated herself from the group of spectators and joined Conrad and Angel. "Most of the way, anyway. We'll have to go along Fen Road for a few miles until it does a really sharp right turn. There's a small parking area there, big enough for two or three cars at most, and we would have to walk the rest of the way. Another half-mile or so."
"Could I come along as well? Phil can supervise here. He's the best site-work manager in the country." Mad Tom had made sure that Rootham and his crew had the estimated track clearly marked on their maps and there really wasn't very much left for him to do until the results came in.
"You'll have to ride in the back with me." Conrad smiled gently as he made the invitation. "You've no bad memories of riding in the back of police cars do you?"
"Umm, can I plead the Fifth Amendment?" Tom seemed slightly embarrassed.
"Not here in Britain you can't." Penny said sweetly. "Although Angel is an American so you'd probably be better off confessing now before she nukes you."
"You've never seen Angel clearing a room full of armed men, have you?" Conrad sneaked a smile at Angel, advising her that this was just friendly banter. "Nukes would cause a lot fewer casualties."
"Keep telling people that a lone person in a room full of enemies has a hell of an advantage over those enemies. In those circumstances, keep moving and you're pretty safe. Unless you're one of the enemies of course." Angel proudly remembered the bar full of Glaswegian gangsters she'd taken out. She regarded that as a highly professional achievement even by her standards.
Penny suddenly sounded very tentative. "Angel, does getting shot hurt?"
"Unless you're killed instantly, yes. It's numb for a second or so but when the air gets in, the whole wound track burns like fire. Take a word of advice, its usually better not to get shot." They'd reached Angel's police car by then. Conrad opened the door for Angel while Tom did the same for Penny, then the two men got into the back seat. To Mad Tom's surprise it was a standard passenger seat.
"Staff use, not a patrol cruiser." Angel explained. "We got the full police interceptor set though. Lights, sirens, ram bars at the front, tuned-up V8 engine, beefed up suspension and double battery."
"Can we use the lights and sirens?" Penny sounded unduly hopeful.
Angel shook her head. "Better not to. If somebody goes off the road trying to get out of our way, we could get sued. We'll just take it normally. You'd be surprised how law-abiding everybody will be when they see us though."
Mad Tom had to admit that Angel was right. She didn’t need the emergency lights or siren to make everybody polite and law-abiding. Just the sight of a white Rover with the standard police 'jam sandwich' stripes down the side was enough. After a few miles, Penny pointed to a small off-turning that led to a patch of cleared ground. "Here we are. Now, there should be a path marked 'Minotaur's Mound' heading due north."
There was, although the path was barely worth of the name. It was a simple strip of infrequently-mown rough-land between two fields and no more than about three feet wide. After about three hundred yards, there was a turning off to the right, an even narrower and less well-kept footpath, again following the boundary between two fields. A prominent sign by the entrance read. "Hazardous footing. Enter at own risk."
“Look how the footpaths follow the old field divisions. For all the time that has passed, the field divisions mostly remain untouched.” Mad Tom was in his element. “Back in the 14th century, my ancestors owned a field in a small village in Somerset. It's changed hands many times since then of course but its boundaries are still identical to the time my ancestors owned it.”
"From here on in, we're in something really weird." Penny looked around carefully. "We're less than four feet above sea level here; see how the woods tower over us? We're about 400 feet from the peak of the hill and its 80 feet up. It's rocky and there are plenty of places you could break an ankle. So watch where you put your feet."
"This hill doesn't make any sort of geological sense at all." Tom looked around. "We're on flat arable land with no great slope to it, that's why the river wanders around so much. And yet we've got this damn great limestone pile suddenly coming out of nowhere. It doesn't get any higher than this until we're into Lincoln itself. The odd thing is, there's high ground between us and the sea to our east and the ground also picks up in height once we get a couple of miles north of here. There's a theory that this whole area was once an extension of the Fens."
"That's a marshy area south of here. King John lost all his treasure there when his wagons were caught by an unexpected high tide." Penny explained for Angel's benefit. "The Fens are believed to be the remnant of a much larger salt-water marsh that is slowly drying out. At the time when the castle was built, the ground would have been a couple of feet lower and a lot wetter. That might be why it flooded so fast."
"There's another theory that the Humber valley once ran all the way south to the Wash and the coastline originally passed through Lincoln. That suggests the city got started as a port. The area between Skegness, Grimsby and Scunthorpe would have been an island with Lincoln being the access to it." Tom thought carefully. "That's really controversial, although there is precedent for it. The tip of Kent was once an island, the Isle of Thanet, but the strait between it and the mainland silted up and eventually vanished completely. What we do know is that the North Sea covers a lot of what was dry land. It's called Doggerland now and the Navy has mapped villages and roads on the sea bed. If we assume the island theory is correct, then the area around Skegness and Grimsby would have been the last remnant of Doggerland as the easternmost areas were flooded."
"Doesn't that contradict the idea that the area around our castle was lower and wetter then?" Angel looked up the narrow, nearly overgrown path towards the summit of the hill. "How high did you say this hill is?"
"Eighty feet. The idea is that the land was rising due to rebound as the weight of the ice was taken off it but the sea level was rising as well as the water from the ice melting refilled the sea. It was an odd sort of race made more so by the fact that what became Britain was pivoting. The ice-shield during the last glaciation ended at the Humber Estuary and that's the pivot point. North of the Humber is rising, south of the Humber is sinking. None of that, though, explains this hill."
"A word of warning." Penny had seen the entrance to the cave ahead through the trees on the hill. "This cave is seriously dangerous quite apart from anything that might be living there. That's why it's gated off and the gate very securely locked. It's limestone and there's probably a network of caves down there that may go on for miles. Nobody knows but get lost down there and there's a good chance you'll never find the way out. Also, there may be potholes or rock slides. So we stick together and don’t go exploring. I believe that's where the minotaur legend came from. Kids went in there to explore and were never seen again. So, obviously 'the minotaurs ate them.' Good way of stopping kids going in there."
Angel nodded and checked the two powerful, wide-beam flashlights she had brought from her police car. She'd also brought a pair of spare batteries just in case. "If it's gated and locked, how do we get in?"
"I've got a set of keys. A detailed geological study of the Minotaur's Cave is on our Departmental list of unfunded priorities."
"Fortunately, geologists are completely indigestible so they'll be quite safe." Penny was staring at the now clearly-visible entrance to the cave. The heavy grating and gates that closed off the interior seemed eerily menacing.
Mad Tom approached them, sorting through his keys and found one that matched the direly menacing appearance of the gates. He was about to unlock them when Conrad held up his hand. "Hold it, Tom. I'd like to look at the lock first."
His inspection took only a few moments. "This lock was picked recently. See the scratches in the metal? Still bright. Somebody has been in here within the last few days."
"If it’s a minotaur, Angel, you hold him off while the rest of us make a run for it." Penny thought she was being droll before she saw Angel's face.
"Damn straight, Penny. Situation like that, or more likely if the bad guys are in there, you three take cover and keep out of my way. Conrad knows the drill."
"Too right." Conrad sounded rueful. "You've yelled at me often enough for not following it."
"I haven't yelled at you. I just instructed you in correct procedure. With emphasis. More significantly though, has anybody smelled the air?"
Angel watched her companions sniffing the air around the gate. Eventually Tom broke the concentration. "It smells bad. Not strongly bad but bad. Sweetish but rotten."
"Good boy. There's something dead in there. That means we need to be really careful. We were joking a moment ago, now it's serious. Conrad, Tom, you take the torches and flank me. Please do not silhouette me against the lights; keep to one side so that I'm in comparative dark but anybody or anything in there is blinded by the glare. All right? Then open up those gates and hit it."
The gate didn’t squeak or squeal as it opened. Angel suspected she wasn't the only one who appreciated the many virtues of WD40. The torches revealed a rough, irregular tunnel that led downwards into the blackness. It had a strange, inviting air about it. Tom looked at the formation and reached a preliminary verdict. "This looks to me that it’s the debris from a glacier. The glacier scrapes up rocks and so on as it moves down, then when it reaches the edge of the ice field, it melts and drops its load. So, we get this kind of jumbled structure with the caves being gaps between the rocks. Erosion over time does the rest. The question now is, what happened to the rest of it?"
"You know what's really interesting about this place, don't you, Tom." Only Conrad noted the amusement in Angel's voice. He could see what she was referring to though.
"What do you mean? This place is really interesting. We could learn a lot from a detailed study of the geological structures here."
"We could start with identifying the two bodies on the ground about six feet in front of you. If you'd tripped over them, I'd have to arrest you for interfering with a crime scene."
"Oh." Mad Tom looked away from the rock walls around him and saw the bodies. "Oh, oh, oh."
Conrad knelt beside them. "Man and woman, bodies decaying but I'm fairly sure they were the two who tried to get into Raw Eddie's hospital room."
"Take a look at the positions, Conrad. They were killed by shots from a gunman with a shotgun firing from near the gate. The male victim went down trying to shield the woman."
Conrad stood up and looked down on the two bodies. "And I had him placed as a wife-beater."
"Beat her and died trying to save her aren't incompatible, you should know that. People we need to get out of here, this is a crime scene." Angel looked around. "I can see at least one expended shotgun shell casing and there will be a lot more evidence we don’t want to contaminate any more than we have. And we need these bodies formally identified. I think our day trip is over.
Central Administration Hut, Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"Any news of the cave, Angel?" Penny had arrived with the printouts from the metal detector search.
"The two victims have been identified. Stephen Hatton and Catherine Mayhew, both known multiple, if minor, offenders in the Mercia Police Area. Both died from shotgun wounds to the chest, both were bound and then severely beaten, probably sometime before they were killed. We'll know a lot more when the full autopsy report comes in. They're both identified from the hospital security cameras as the couple who tried to see Raw Eddie in his room."
"As vicious as the attempt to kill Raw Eddie." There were tears trickling down Penny's face as she imagined what the last hours of the victims had been like. "Who are these people?"
"We'll probably never know, Penny." Angel took care to make that statement since lying always caused Conrad hours of anguish while it didn’t worry her in the slightest. In any case, Richard Baldwin had entered the center to see what the results of the detectorist sweep had been. Garry Rootham had also just arrived with a role of paper under his arm. Baldwin was eyeing it hungrily.
"How did it come out, Garry?" Tom was also eyeing the printout only he was still in shock from the discovery of the bodies.
"Really good, Tom. We should both ask for a bonus. Before I show you this, let me explain how it works. Every time we get a hit, we push a button on the detector. That records the exact Global Location Index position of the hit. We can also select whether it’s ferrous, non-ferrous or uncertain. Circle for the first, square for the second, triangle for the third. We upload all the data to the Cyberweb and go to a mapping and display tool in the statistics section of the Scientific Room that plots it all to scale. Then we download the result and print it out. Penny let us use your printer for that, it's much better than ours."
Rootham took a deep breath and unrolled the map. There was a thick river-like stream of circles that ran almost down the center of the paper with a scattering of squares, circles and triangles to either side of the main belt. Angel noted that Rootham had kept the top of the chart folded over. "All right, this big strip of ferrous. See it starts at your gates, this is the track in. There's a big gap where the clay is too deep for our detectors to pick anything up but we start to get scattered contacts here, where your clay layer is about three feet deep and they give us the full responses here where it's less than a foot. We have a solid track until we get to relatively recent plowing and the track is lost.
"That's ground that was enclosed in the 18th century. The track was probably destroyed by plowing then." Prema had come in and was staring at the chart. "The older individual field boundaries align with the track though. And they fade out where they hit the deep clay. I'd say this ties in nicely. We have a bona-fide trading community here."
"We got something better than that." Rootham was triumphant. "Take a gander at this."
'This' was a small but extremely dense cluster of circles, well off to one side of the main track. There was a collective intake of breath. "It's officially non-ferrous but an experienced detectorist can detect gold by the sound of the response. This is gold. You got yourself a hoard here. We need to report it to the authorities. I've got the forms in my caravan, Doctor Sexton, they need to be filled out by either you or Doctor Hardy."
"Their office is closed right now." Penny had glanced at her watch. "We'll have them ready first thing tomorrow, without fail. Until then, nobody says a word about this to anybody. Understood?"
Re: 2008 - Eye of the Nighthawker
Chapter Nine
Security Office, Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"How's coverage?" Angel was fascinated by the sight of the drones at work. One was circling the archeological dig on a preset racetrack course. That screen was almost blank, except for a few faint animal traces, showing that the area was deserted. A second drone was circling the Detectorists area of the accommodation field. It was also on a preset racetrack and the screen from its sensor pod showed frequent movements between the caravans and numerous heat sources including what appeared to be some open cooking fires. The third drone was being flown by Mao-lee and was circling the Hoard at maximum altitude and at minimum power settings. Given the dark night, its dark-gray color and its flight path, it was as near to invisible as it could be. It was also armed and the screen had cross-hairs on it. The downside was that will all three drones flying, there was only the drone being maintained to fill any holes.
"Good, eldest sister. We're picking up a couple of deer, I suspect one of their friends is on the cooking fires back in the Detectorists camp. Really fresh venison spit-roasted over an open fire - yummy." Mao-lee swung her drone around so it was crisscrossing the target area on an unpredictable course.
"That didn’t come from the local butcher." Penny was sitting in one corner with Rootham, completing all the paperwork needed to register a treasure trove. "That couple up in the cave, do we know any more about them?"
Angel had finished reading the interim autopsy report. There were a number of test results still to come back but the general picture was clear enough and it made grim reading. "Basically two locals who got in over their heads. When they failed to get in and finish off Raw Eddie, they were killed themselves. They would have been anyway, this was a Jackal Contract that they were too dumb to recognize."
"Jackal Contract?" Penny didn’t understand the underworld language and wasn't ashamed to ask.
Mao-lee looked up. "A contract that will inevitably result in the death of the assassin. We're all taught to recognize and avoid them."
"Usually the assassin is killed when they try to collect their fee. Penny, the pathologist here is a Doctor Sam Ryan. Is he any good?"
"She. Yes, very good although she doesn’t get on with the police all that well. If she doesn’t agree with the way they are doing the investigation, she tells them. Loudly. Something wrong?"
"According to her findings, the victims were restrained and beaten before being killed. Mayhew especially so. That's unprofessional and, by the way, very stupid. We're dealing with some sick puppies here." Angel's voice trailed off, her mind going back to the time when she had been in Mayhew's place. She'd managed to survive then, Mayhew hadn’t been so fortunate.
"We always have been." Conrad spoke up from the shadows in one corner of the room. "Something we should have recognized earlier if we hadn't been so focused on the nighthawkers. Financial gain wasn't the motivation here, the desire to hurt and torment was. That's why Eddie was injured the way he was. These are revenge crimes; I doubt if the Nighthawkers were even involved."
"But revenge for what? I can't think of anybody who should have a real grudge against us." Penny was genuinely shocked by the idea that somebody could hate her archeology department so much.
"Could be nothing anybody would even notice." Angel was looking at the sensor display from the drone. "I knew somebody once who was knifed in the gut because he bought the last chicken salad sandwich off a roadside food stand. The guy behind him had wanted it and assumed taking it was intended as a deliberate insult. Something else, people like that usually attract others with the same mind-set. When we wrap this up, I bet we will have solved other random violence cases as well. Hey, we have four contacts out by the hoard."
Mao-lee took a quick look. "They're ours. I got our off-duty team out there to act as our snatch group."
"Good girl. Very good girl." Angel watched the screen for a minute or so more then started to get bored. She picked up the autopsy report and continues to read it. “Interesting. Traces of accelerant, provision identification paraffin, on the bodies. They started to burn them, but didn’t go through with it. I wonder why?”
“Ran out of time?” Mao-lee suddenly tensed. “We have something; major heat source approaching the hoard. It’s following the ancient track although I don’t think they know it. Switching to FLIIR.”
“FLIIR?” It was something Angel hadn’t run into before. She’d used image-intensifying night vision equipment occasionally but since transition, her own night vision was good enough to do without.
“Forward-Looking Imaging Infra-Red. We’ve been using wide-angle scanning to date. Told us something was coming but no detail. Now, we’ll get a heat picture.”
The picture took a small fraction of a second to focus but when it did so, it was recognizable as a long wheel-base Landrover four-by-four. That proved nothing by itself; almost every farm in Great Britain had one or two such vehicles for utility work. Angel knew that the probability was that a local farm had lost one in the last few hours. Mao-lee had maneuvered her drone so it was flying an S-track behind the Landrover. Angel said nothing but approved; the men inside would be watching the hoard site, not the sky behind them. Six figures got out of the vehicle when it halted close to the hoard. Then, a second vehicle appeared and a single figure got out of that. "Interesting, eldest sister. A short wheel-base Landrover. Like the ones used up here. Single occupant. Could we have their boss come to collect the treasure?"
“Penny, Prema, you two had better look at this. There were seven men not five. You really still think it would have been a good idea to take them on that night?” Angel watched them take in how close they had come to a very unpleasant death, then switched her attention back to the screen Six of the men were gathering around the site, exactly on the carefully-compiled Global Location Index plot. The seventh, the most recent arrival, was standing at a distance and ‘supervising’. None of them realized they were already in a potentially lethal crossfire. Innocent of the knowledge they were a trigger squeeze away from a bloody death, the six men at the site started digging.
The hoard was buried about seven feet down; burying it had been hard work for Conrad, Rootham and Hardy despite careful ‘supervision’ by Angel and Mao-lee. Despite the digging, there had been an almost party-like atmosphere at the scene, especially when Angel and Mao-lee had taken over at the end to clear any sign that digging had taken place recently. By the time they had finished, there was no trace that the work had been done. Only Conrad had realized he had just seen how an inconvenient body could be ‘vanished’.
The men at the site showed no such concern. They were digging hard and fast, their images getting brighter as they worked up a sweat. Eventually one of them jumped down into the pit and picked up something that was too cold to appear on the infra-red image.
“They’ve got it. We can close in now.” Angel watched as the man with the prize passed it to the seventh man, the one who had been “supervising”.
“All traps, this is Greyhound. Weapons are free, close in and detain those men. Keep clear of their truck.”
Hoard Site, Between Washingborough and Branston, Lincolnshire.
Darren Simpson was straightening his back after a few minutes of unaccustomed hard work when he heard a weird buzz. It wasn't the sound that told him he and his mates were under fire but the white glare of muzzle blast from a position off to his left and the crackling sound of supersonic bullets passing just over his head.
"All of you, stand still and raise your hands above your heads. You are under arrest." The voice had a slight accent that Simpson couldn’t place.
"Leg it!" Simpson yelled out the order in near panic and started to run for the parked Landrover he had driven in. What he saw next was beyond his experience. A white bar of tracer fire seemed to erupt from the sky and descend with deadly, pinpoint accuracy on the Landrover. The cab disintegrated from the bullet strikes, the glass shattering outwards as the bullets lanced through the thin metal. The brilliant white flashes from the hits traced backwards along the truck body until they hit the fuel tank and the vehicle exploded in a dull 'whumpf ' of exploding gasoline.
"Don't try to run away. You'll only die tired." The voice from the darkness sounded slightly amused.
All six men stopped abruptly in their tracks and raised their hands high. They had brought shotguns with them but they had left them in the now-burning Landrover while digging. Even if they hadn't, they realized that shotguns against machine guns was not a good way to go. And that excluded the air support they had just seen. In the darkness, they had greatly over-estimated the size and firepower of the drone and each of the six men was quite positive that had just been strafed by a manned aircraft.
In the background, the leader of the looters had made his way to his Landrover with the chest of recovered loot. He already had a buyer for it in East London and all he wanted right then was to get away from this scene. He clambered into his Landrover and swerved away, running at maximum speed in a desperate desire to make himself the most difficult possible target. It worked, a few shots from the ground rang as they hit the aluminum sides of the vehicle while a few more came down from the drone before it ran out of ammunition.
Yip Jun-ren pressed the button on his microphone. "Greyhound, this is Trap-One. We got six of them in custody. Their leader got clear."
Security Office, Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"One of them, the leader, got away, eldest sister." Mao-lee sounded apprehensive, something which made Angel note that despite the progress made, she still hadn’t fully got over her lack of confidence problem. Nor has Cristi come to think of it. Is there a pattern here?
"Doesn't matter, younger sister. The ones we have will identify him soon enough. You have done well. The prisoners are coming in now?"
"They are, eldest sister. Younger brother has made sure they don't speak with each other."
Angel was suddenly seized with a horrible thought. "They will be able to speak to Zhēnxiàng when they get here?"
Mao-lee paused for a second before the joke sank in. "Oh yes, eldest sister, their tongues have not yet been removed. May I ask something?"
Angel nodded slightly. Mao-lee swallowed and continued. "Have we lost a lot of gold when the leader escaped."
"The box contained ten kilograms of assorted artefacts, apparently solid gold. Just as metal, that would be worth 400,000 sovereigns, perhaps twice that as genuine gold antiquities. The truth is, they are worth 165 sovereigns as scrap. They are gilded lead and they are production line rejects. They all have defects that will instantly expose them as fakes. In reality, that makes them next to worthless. I paid 50 sovereigns for them, including friends and family discount."
That brought something to mind. Angel went outside the door and called Penny over. "Penny, two things. We're bringing in the people who crippled Raw Eddie in a few minutes. Please spread the word, we don’t want any riots or attempted lynching. We're short on people here and we'd have to get violent. The other thing is, somebody from here has done a runner. Find out who isn’t around, will you? I'm calling the police to take the prisoners into custody."
By the time a column of police cars arrived, the prisoners had been brought in and were sitting, widely separated, on the ground with their hands on their heads. Chao Zong-xian was in charge of the guard detail, watched from a distance by an admiring Barbara Wilde. Angel assumed that when this was all over, Chao would be getting lucky.
"I am Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd. Who is in charge here?" Angel discretely pointed at Mao-lee.
"Superintendent. I am Chen Mao-lee, Red Pole of the security detachment here. We have six prisoners for you, arrested in process of stealing archeological remains and suspected of involvement in the murders of Stephen Hatton and Catherine Mayhew and the attempted murder of Edward Rawlings. I would request that they be kept well-separated."
Boyd's mouth twitched slightly. "Red Pole eh? I must admit your ranks are much more imaginative than ours, Miss Chen, although I must admit my instincts rebel at the sight of hired security guards armed with machine guns. And armed drones flying around with loaded guns."
"Superintendent, we're only here to back you up and fill the gap until you arrive. No more and no less. That's why we were sworn in. Think of us as technical consultants and assume that all our equipment is at your disposal."
Boyd looked at the drone parked nearby. "Very well, we take official custody of your prisoners and will transport them to Lincoln City Center Police Station. Is there anything else I should know?"
"There is a burned-out Landrover back at the crime scene. I suspect it's stolen so the owner will have to make an insurance claim. We'll provide an official statement if he needs one. One perp got away in a second Landrover. We're identifying him now." Mao-lee handed him a clipboard and pen with a list of prisoners, identified only as John Doe One to John Doe Six. Boyd signed for each prisoner and handed the clip-board back. Solemnly Mao-lee returned the pen to him. "Chinese tradition."
"Thank you, Miss Chen." Boyd reached into a pocket and took out a pen bearing the Mercia Police crest. He gave it to Mao-lee before continuing. "Is Inspector de Llorente here?"
"Yo, Peter." Angel spoke up from the background.
"Angel. We heard you were up here working for the Home Office. DCI Helen Morse sends you her best wishes and hopes you're recovering well. As far as Mercia is concerned, any chance of another one of your lectures?"
"Sure. I'll fit you in. I've a lot of work to catch up on so it won’t be right away but it'll happen."
"Great. These drones of yours are very interesting. We could use them."
"Mao-lee and her team will demonstrate them to you when this job's wrapped up. They're too expensive for you to buy as inventory kit but we can strike a rental deal."
Boyd glanced over his shoulder and saw that the suspects had already been placed in separate police cars. "That sounds like an interesting idea. See you and Conrad back at the shop."
Interrogation Room, Lincoln City Center Police Station
"Good evening. You are Darren Simpson?" Conrad asked the question quietly and politely.
Simpson had been grimly determined to maintain absolute silence but the low-key approach undermined that resolve. Anyway. He reasoned, they obviously know the answer. "Yeah, that's me."
Conrad shook his head sympathetically. "Been a bad evening for you, I understand. I imagine you didn’t expect security guards waiting for you."
"Rentacops with freakin' air support? Gimme a break. And now I get the Spanish Inquisition?" Simpson had snapped. The sheer terror of the airstrike, now magnified many times by its sudden and unexpected attack, broke through.
"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, Darren." Conrad beat Angel out with the line by a tiny fraction of a second. "We really don’t care that much about the stuff you dug up. Mostly, its worthless junk. It's the killings up in Minotaur's Cave and the attempted murder of Edward Rawlings that will get you sent down for life."
"I, we, didn’t have nothing to do with the Rawlings kid. That were all his doin'."
"Who is 'his'?"
"The boss, the big guy he called himself. Joke that, he's smaller than that bint you got behind you there. Right nasty bugger though."
"What happened, Darren?"
Simpson paused and during that second he was hit by a moment of clarity. He saw himself, a small cog in a machine, somebody who was about to catch the blame that belonged to more important figures. He had envisaged himself as a hard man yet looking at the Chinese woman lounging up against the wall, he knew that he had never known what truly hard people looked like. Until now. That was when he understood that his only way out of this mess was to tell the truth.
"We heard from the inside jimmies that there was treasure in one of the huts. So we went up there to grab it. Should be a good bit of dosh in it for us the boss said. All we found were a few bits of bent metal. No coins, no jewels, nuttin. There was a lot left undug so we decided to come back next night and search a bit more. When we did the kid was already up there. The boss told us to get where the treasure was out of him. Poor kid was terrified, told us that the bits of metal we'd found were treasure, see? Tools, farm things, some complete, some broken up. No gold, no coins. The Boss went berserk, right wally, he did. Screaming with range and cursin' like I nather heard before. Grabbed a spade and started smashin' at the kids legs. Poor kid was screamin' his head off and we saw the tents in the field coming alive. Knew they'd be on top of us soon so we legged it. Boss stopped, took one swing at the kid's head and then ran too. All over in a couple of minutes."
"And?" Conrad asked gently, aware that Simpson was also haunted by the memory of that night. He'd listened while Angel had briefed him on the discussion she'd had with Penny and Prema; now he knew that they weren’t the only people who had been deeply disturbed by what had happened.
"We heard the kid was still alive. So, the boss says he'll fix it. He finds, don’t know how, them two and pays them a grand to go into the 'ospital and finish him. Only some copper stops them and throws them out at gunpoint. The boss ad us pick'em up and take them to the cave, Looked right fools they did, tryin' to explain themselves. Then he tells us to give them a good bootin'. He's got that mad look in the eyes again so we does as we told. We try to go easy on the woman, ya knows, kicks that don’t quite connect. A shoein', not a bootin'. Man helps keeps trying to take it himself and protect 'er. Boss goes wild, the mad bugger, ee really wants to see the woman 'urting. He gives her the bootin' screaming really bad at her. Show you ow bad it were, she's crying, not from the kickin' but from what he was callin' her. Then he gets a can somehow, with paraffin in it and throws it on them. We knows then 'ee plans to set them alight, probably always did. Rog has a sawed-off double barrel so he gives them a round in the chest each. Saves them from being burned alive, ya know?"
Conrad nodded silently, for once not knowing quite what to say. When he spoke, his voice was shaking slightly. "And then he told you if he told the police what had happened, you'd all go to the gallows?"
Simpson's reply was a wordless nod. Angel detached herself from her patch of wall and asked one simple question. "What were you going to do with the loot?"
"Boss was goin'; down to the smoke to sell it. Ee's got a contact down there."
"Where?"
"Somewhere in 'Oundsditch. He said the gold would have been worth 40 thou' in sovereigns and we'd get a quarter between us."
Angel shook her head. "There was ten kilos of scrap lead in that box. If it really had been gold, it would have been worth ten times what your boss said. You could have bought a good brief with your share. He hasn't just dumped the crap on you, he's cheated you into the bargain."
That gave Conrad his opportunity. He had a suspicion he knew what the answer to his question would be but he had to ask it anyway. "Do you know who the boss was?"
"Yeah, sure. The guy on television. The one them on the site call Bald Rick.
Security Office, Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"How's coverage?" Angel was fascinated by the sight of the drones at work. One was circling the archeological dig on a preset racetrack course. That screen was almost blank, except for a few faint animal traces, showing that the area was deserted. A second drone was circling the Detectorists area of the accommodation field. It was also on a preset racetrack and the screen from its sensor pod showed frequent movements between the caravans and numerous heat sources including what appeared to be some open cooking fires. The third drone was being flown by Mao-lee and was circling the Hoard at maximum altitude and at minimum power settings. Given the dark night, its dark-gray color and its flight path, it was as near to invisible as it could be. It was also armed and the screen had cross-hairs on it. The downside was that will all three drones flying, there was only the drone being maintained to fill any holes.
"Good, eldest sister. We're picking up a couple of deer, I suspect one of their friends is on the cooking fires back in the Detectorists camp. Really fresh venison spit-roasted over an open fire - yummy." Mao-lee swung her drone around so it was crisscrossing the target area on an unpredictable course.
"That didn’t come from the local butcher." Penny was sitting in one corner with Rootham, completing all the paperwork needed to register a treasure trove. "That couple up in the cave, do we know any more about them?"
Angel had finished reading the interim autopsy report. There were a number of test results still to come back but the general picture was clear enough and it made grim reading. "Basically two locals who got in over their heads. When they failed to get in and finish off Raw Eddie, they were killed themselves. They would have been anyway, this was a Jackal Contract that they were too dumb to recognize."
"Jackal Contract?" Penny didn’t understand the underworld language and wasn't ashamed to ask.
Mao-lee looked up. "A contract that will inevitably result in the death of the assassin. We're all taught to recognize and avoid them."
"Usually the assassin is killed when they try to collect their fee. Penny, the pathologist here is a Doctor Sam Ryan. Is he any good?"
"She. Yes, very good although she doesn’t get on with the police all that well. If she doesn’t agree with the way they are doing the investigation, she tells them. Loudly. Something wrong?"
"According to her findings, the victims were restrained and beaten before being killed. Mayhew especially so. That's unprofessional and, by the way, very stupid. We're dealing with some sick puppies here." Angel's voice trailed off, her mind going back to the time when she had been in Mayhew's place. She'd managed to survive then, Mayhew hadn’t been so fortunate.
"We always have been." Conrad spoke up from the shadows in one corner of the room. "Something we should have recognized earlier if we hadn't been so focused on the nighthawkers. Financial gain wasn't the motivation here, the desire to hurt and torment was. That's why Eddie was injured the way he was. These are revenge crimes; I doubt if the Nighthawkers were even involved."
"But revenge for what? I can't think of anybody who should have a real grudge against us." Penny was genuinely shocked by the idea that somebody could hate her archeology department so much.
"Could be nothing anybody would even notice." Angel was looking at the sensor display from the drone. "I knew somebody once who was knifed in the gut because he bought the last chicken salad sandwich off a roadside food stand. The guy behind him had wanted it and assumed taking it was intended as a deliberate insult. Something else, people like that usually attract others with the same mind-set. When we wrap this up, I bet we will have solved other random violence cases as well. Hey, we have four contacts out by the hoard."
Mao-lee took a quick look. "They're ours. I got our off-duty team out there to act as our snatch group."
"Good girl. Very good girl." Angel watched the screen for a minute or so more then started to get bored. She picked up the autopsy report and continues to read it. “Interesting. Traces of accelerant, provision identification paraffin, on the bodies. They started to burn them, but didn’t go through with it. I wonder why?”
“Ran out of time?” Mao-lee suddenly tensed. “We have something; major heat source approaching the hoard. It’s following the ancient track although I don’t think they know it. Switching to FLIIR.”
“FLIIR?” It was something Angel hadn’t run into before. She’d used image-intensifying night vision equipment occasionally but since transition, her own night vision was good enough to do without.
“Forward-Looking Imaging Infra-Red. We’ve been using wide-angle scanning to date. Told us something was coming but no detail. Now, we’ll get a heat picture.”
The picture took a small fraction of a second to focus but when it did so, it was recognizable as a long wheel-base Landrover four-by-four. That proved nothing by itself; almost every farm in Great Britain had one or two such vehicles for utility work. Angel knew that the probability was that a local farm had lost one in the last few hours. Mao-lee had maneuvered her drone so it was flying an S-track behind the Landrover. Angel said nothing but approved; the men inside would be watching the hoard site, not the sky behind them. Six figures got out of the vehicle when it halted close to the hoard. Then, a second vehicle appeared and a single figure got out of that. "Interesting, eldest sister. A short wheel-base Landrover. Like the ones used up here. Single occupant. Could we have their boss come to collect the treasure?"
“Penny, Prema, you two had better look at this. There were seven men not five. You really still think it would have been a good idea to take them on that night?” Angel watched them take in how close they had come to a very unpleasant death, then switched her attention back to the screen Six of the men were gathering around the site, exactly on the carefully-compiled Global Location Index plot. The seventh, the most recent arrival, was standing at a distance and ‘supervising’. None of them realized they were already in a potentially lethal crossfire. Innocent of the knowledge they were a trigger squeeze away from a bloody death, the six men at the site started digging.
The hoard was buried about seven feet down; burying it had been hard work for Conrad, Rootham and Hardy despite careful ‘supervision’ by Angel and Mao-lee. Despite the digging, there had been an almost party-like atmosphere at the scene, especially when Angel and Mao-lee had taken over at the end to clear any sign that digging had taken place recently. By the time they had finished, there was no trace that the work had been done. Only Conrad had realized he had just seen how an inconvenient body could be ‘vanished’.
The men at the site showed no such concern. They were digging hard and fast, their images getting brighter as they worked up a sweat. Eventually one of them jumped down into the pit and picked up something that was too cold to appear on the infra-red image.
“They’ve got it. We can close in now.” Angel watched as the man with the prize passed it to the seventh man, the one who had been “supervising”.
“All traps, this is Greyhound. Weapons are free, close in and detain those men. Keep clear of their truck.”
Hoard Site, Between Washingborough and Branston, Lincolnshire.
Darren Simpson was straightening his back after a few minutes of unaccustomed hard work when he heard a weird buzz. It wasn't the sound that told him he and his mates were under fire but the white glare of muzzle blast from a position off to his left and the crackling sound of supersonic bullets passing just over his head.
"All of you, stand still and raise your hands above your heads. You are under arrest." The voice had a slight accent that Simpson couldn’t place.
"Leg it!" Simpson yelled out the order in near panic and started to run for the parked Landrover he had driven in. What he saw next was beyond his experience. A white bar of tracer fire seemed to erupt from the sky and descend with deadly, pinpoint accuracy on the Landrover. The cab disintegrated from the bullet strikes, the glass shattering outwards as the bullets lanced through the thin metal. The brilliant white flashes from the hits traced backwards along the truck body until they hit the fuel tank and the vehicle exploded in a dull 'whumpf ' of exploding gasoline.
"Don't try to run away. You'll only die tired." The voice from the darkness sounded slightly amused.
All six men stopped abruptly in their tracks and raised their hands high. They had brought shotguns with them but they had left them in the now-burning Landrover while digging. Even if they hadn't, they realized that shotguns against machine guns was not a good way to go. And that excluded the air support they had just seen. In the darkness, they had greatly over-estimated the size and firepower of the drone and each of the six men was quite positive that had just been strafed by a manned aircraft.
In the background, the leader of the looters had made his way to his Landrover with the chest of recovered loot. He already had a buyer for it in East London and all he wanted right then was to get away from this scene. He clambered into his Landrover and swerved away, running at maximum speed in a desperate desire to make himself the most difficult possible target. It worked, a few shots from the ground rang as they hit the aluminum sides of the vehicle while a few more came down from the drone before it ran out of ammunition.
Yip Jun-ren pressed the button on his microphone. "Greyhound, this is Trap-One. We got six of them in custody. Their leader got clear."
Security Office, Witham Archeological Site, Washingborough, Lincolnshire.
"One of them, the leader, got away, eldest sister." Mao-lee sounded apprehensive, something which made Angel note that despite the progress made, she still hadn’t fully got over her lack of confidence problem. Nor has Cristi come to think of it. Is there a pattern here?
"Doesn't matter, younger sister. The ones we have will identify him soon enough. You have done well. The prisoners are coming in now?"
"They are, eldest sister. Younger brother has made sure they don't speak with each other."
Angel was suddenly seized with a horrible thought. "They will be able to speak to Zhēnxiàng when they get here?"
Mao-lee paused for a second before the joke sank in. "Oh yes, eldest sister, their tongues have not yet been removed. May I ask something?"
Angel nodded slightly. Mao-lee swallowed and continued. "Have we lost a lot of gold when the leader escaped."
"The box contained ten kilograms of assorted artefacts, apparently solid gold. Just as metal, that would be worth 400,000 sovereigns, perhaps twice that as genuine gold antiquities. The truth is, they are worth 165 sovereigns as scrap. They are gilded lead and they are production line rejects. They all have defects that will instantly expose them as fakes. In reality, that makes them next to worthless. I paid 50 sovereigns for them, including friends and family discount."
That brought something to mind. Angel went outside the door and called Penny over. "Penny, two things. We're bringing in the people who crippled Raw Eddie in a few minutes. Please spread the word, we don’t want any riots or attempted lynching. We're short on people here and we'd have to get violent. The other thing is, somebody from here has done a runner. Find out who isn’t around, will you? I'm calling the police to take the prisoners into custody."
By the time a column of police cars arrived, the prisoners had been brought in and were sitting, widely separated, on the ground with their hands on their heads. Chao Zong-xian was in charge of the guard detail, watched from a distance by an admiring Barbara Wilde. Angel assumed that when this was all over, Chao would be getting lucky.
"I am Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd. Who is in charge here?" Angel discretely pointed at Mao-lee.
"Superintendent. I am Chen Mao-lee, Red Pole of the security detachment here. We have six prisoners for you, arrested in process of stealing archeological remains and suspected of involvement in the murders of Stephen Hatton and Catherine Mayhew and the attempted murder of Edward Rawlings. I would request that they be kept well-separated."
Boyd's mouth twitched slightly. "Red Pole eh? I must admit your ranks are much more imaginative than ours, Miss Chen, although I must admit my instincts rebel at the sight of hired security guards armed with machine guns. And armed drones flying around with loaded guns."
"Superintendent, we're only here to back you up and fill the gap until you arrive. No more and no less. That's why we were sworn in. Think of us as technical consultants and assume that all our equipment is at your disposal."
Boyd looked at the drone parked nearby. "Very well, we take official custody of your prisoners and will transport them to Lincoln City Center Police Station. Is there anything else I should know?"
"There is a burned-out Landrover back at the crime scene. I suspect it's stolen so the owner will have to make an insurance claim. We'll provide an official statement if he needs one. One perp got away in a second Landrover. We're identifying him now." Mao-lee handed him a clipboard and pen with a list of prisoners, identified only as John Doe One to John Doe Six. Boyd signed for each prisoner and handed the clip-board back. Solemnly Mao-lee returned the pen to him. "Chinese tradition."
"Thank you, Miss Chen." Boyd reached into a pocket and took out a pen bearing the Mercia Police crest. He gave it to Mao-lee before continuing. "Is Inspector de Llorente here?"
"Yo, Peter." Angel spoke up from the background.
"Angel. We heard you were up here working for the Home Office. DCI Helen Morse sends you her best wishes and hopes you're recovering well. As far as Mercia is concerned, any chance of another one of your lectures?"
"Sure. I'll fit you in. I've a lot of work to catch up on so it won’t be right away but it'll happen."
"Great. These drones of yours are very interesting. We could use them."
"Mao-lee and her team will demonstrate them to you when this job's wrapped up. They're too expensive for you to buy as inventory kit but we can strike a rental deal."
Boyd glanced over his shoulder and saw that the suspects had already been placed in separate police cars. "That sounds like an interesting idea. See you and Conrad back at the shop."
Interrogation Room, Lincoln City Center Police Station
"Good evening. You are Darren Simpson?" Conrad asked the question quietly and politely.
Simpson had been grimly determined to maintain absolute silence but the low-key approach undermined that resolve. Anyway. He reasoned, they obviously know the answer. "Yeah, that's me."
Conrad shook his head sympathetically. "Been a bad evening for you, I understand. I imagine you didn’t expect security guards waiting for you."
"Rentacops with freakin' air support? Gimme a break. And now I get the Spanish Inquisition?" Simpson had snapped. The sheer terror of the airstrike, now magnified many times by its sudden and unexpected attack, broke through.
"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, Darren." Conrad beat Angel out with the line by a tiny fraction of a second. "We really don’t care that much about the stuff you dug up. Mostly, its worthless junk. It's the killings up in Minotaur's Cave and the attempted murder of Edward Rawlings that will get you sent down for life."
"I, we, didn’t have nothing to do with the Rawlings kid. That were all his doin'."
"Who is 'his'?"
"The boss, the big guy he called himself. Joke that, he's smaller than that bint you got behind you there. Right nasty bugger though."
"What happened, Darren?"
Simpson paused and during that second he was hit by a moment of clarity. He saw himself, a small cog in a machine, somebody who was about to catch the blame that belonged to more important figures. He had envisaged himself as a hard man yet looking at the Chinese woman lounging up against the wall, he knew that he had never known what truly hard people looked like. Until now. That was when he understood that his only way out of this mess was to tell the truth.
"We heard from the inside jimmies that there was treasure in one of the huts. So we went up there to grab it. Should be a good bit of dosh in it for us the boss said. All we found were a few bits of bent metal. No coins, no jewels, nuttin. There was a lot left undug so we decided to come back next night and search a bit more. When we did the kid was already up there. The boss told us to get where the treasure was out of him. Poor kid was terrified, told us that the bits of metal we'd found were treasure, see? Tools, farm things, some complete, some broken up. No gold, no coins. The Boss went berserk, right wally, he did. Screaming with range and cursin' like I nather heard before. Grabbed a spade and started smashin' at the kids legs. Poor kid was screamin' his head off and we saw the tents in the field coming alive. Knew they'd be on top of us soon so we legged it. Boss stopped, took one swing at the kid's head and then ran too. All over in a couple of minutes."
"And?" Conrad asked gently, aware that Simpson was also haunted by the memory of that night. He'd listened while Angel had briefed him on the discussion she'd had with Penny and Prema; now he knew that they weren’t the only people who had been deeply disturbed by what had happened.
"We heard the kid was still alive. So, the boss says he'll fix it. He finds, don’t know how, them two and pays them a grand to go into the 'ospital and finish him. Only some copper stops them and throws them out at gunpoint. The boss ad us pick'em up and take them to the cave, Looked right fools they did, tryin' to explain themselves. Then he tells us to give them a good bootin'. He's got that mad look in the eyes again so we does as we told. We try to go easy on the woman, ya knows, kicks that don’t quite connect. A shoein', not a bootin'. Man helps keeps trying to take it himself and protect 'er. Boss goes wild, the mad bugger, ee really wants to see the woman 'urting. He gives her the bootin' screaming really bad at her. Show you ow bad it were, she's crying, not from the kickin' but from what he was callin' her. Then he gets a can somehow, with paraffin in it and throws it on them. We knows then 'ee plans to set them alight, probably always did. Rog has a sawed-off double barrel so he gives them a round in the chest each. Saves them from being burned alive, ya know?"
Conrad nodded silently, for once not knowing quite what to say. When he spoke, his voice was shaking slightly. "And then he told you if he told the police what had happened, you'd all go to the gallows?"
Simpson's reply was a wordless nod. Angel detached herself from her patch of wall and asked one simple question. "What were you going to do with the loot?"
"Boss was goin'; down to the smoke to sell it. Ee's got a contact down there."
"Where?"
"Somewhere in 'Oundsditch. He said the gold would have been worth 40 thou' in sovereigns and we'd get a quarter between us."
Angel shook her head. "There was ten kilos of scrap lead in that box. If it really had been gold, it would have been worth ten times what your boss said. You could have bought a good brief with your share. He hasn't just dumped the crap on you, he's cheated you into the bargain."
That gave Conrad his opportunity. He had a suspicion he knew what the answer to his question would be but he had to ask it anyway. "Do you know who the boss was?"
"Yeah, sure. The guy on television. The one them on the site call Bald Rick.
Re: 2008 - Eye of the Nighthawker
Chapter Ten
Superintendent Boyd's Office. Lincoln City Center Police Station
"What do you think, Conrad?" Angel had helped herself to some police station coffee and only her rum-seared taste-buds prevented her choking on it.
"Their stories mostly line up. They're local muscle, hired to fetch and carry, and everything went sour on them. Their claim they 'went easy' on Catherine Mayhew doesn't hold up. She was hurt much worse than her friend, despite his efforts to protect her. I don’t think they were lying, not deliberately. They knew that was what they should have done so they remembered doing it, not what they really did. The bit about stopping them being burned alive though, that rang true to me. They couldn’t have known we'd already picked up on the accelerant."
Another young woman had stood with the condemned at Medina del Campo in Castile. It was whispered that Calamoya de Vallesteros had turned down a suitor and that denouncing her for witchcraft had been his revenge. Perhaps she was the cleverest of them all for she had immediately made a very full and detailed confession and sincerely repented her sins. Her reward was around her neck, a rope. Of all the eight, she was the only one who would be strangled before the fires were set. Conrad closed his eyes and said a prayer for her soul, one of the many innocents he had sent to a terrible death. The six men in detention had made the same decision for their two victims as Calamoya de Vallesteros had for herself. Better a quick death than the agony that otherwise awaited them.
He was spared from pursuing that line further by the sound of Angel's portable telephone ringing. She answered it and spoke in her prison voice that made overhearing her words almost impossible. When the conversation was finished, she looked at Conrad without any discernable emotion. "Richard Baldwin, AKA Bald Rick is missing along with one of the University Landrovers. Also, you were right in suggesting his accomplices had records. The police have identified three of the TV crew as having convictions for varying forms of violence. All joined the TV crew since 1996 when the night hawking really started. All were hired on the recommendation of Baldwin."
"Could be a coincidence, Angel. We're still not really sure we have a full handle on what's going on here."
"We'll know soon enough. Peter is sending some of his minions over to bring them in." This time it was Angel who was stopped from going further by her telephone ringing. The conversation was very brief. "Conrad, Eddie has come around and is coherent. We need to get over there fast.
County Hospital Louth, Lincolnshire.
"Inspector, it's good to see you again. We never got a chance to thank you properly for helping out with those two intruders. What happened with them?" Matron Sabine Mohr still remembered how Stephen Hatton and Catherine Mayhew had disrespected the nurses under her authority.
"I'm sorry, I can't comment on an ongoing investigation." Angel smiled and in the background, Conrad was hard-put to stop himself laughing. Angel was beginning to sound like a police officer as well as behave like one. That brought a curious thought to his mind. Does Angel behave like a gangster only because she has been surrounded by such people all of her life? Is she simply mimicking gangster behavior the way she mimics police officers?
"Of course, sorry, I shouldn’t have asked." Mohr looked around. "You've come to see Eddie? He's recovered consciousness but he's in terrible depression. We're more worried about that now than anything else."
"Not a marrow embolism?"
"We call them Fat Embolism Syndrome these days. Or FES for short. That problem is fading now, Eddie dodged a bullet there." Mohr looked at the two guns hanging under Angel's shoulders and glanced away hastily. "It was a very serious problem while he was unconscious but now he's improving, the body can usually deal with it by itself. The depression though, it is so bad we have him on a discreet suicide watch. That helps us watch for convulsions as well of course. They're the first symptoms of FES. Come along, I'll take you in. Be very patient with him though, acute depression is an awful thing and some people don’t understand how bad it can be. I've seen people who could have been saved driven to suicide by a few loudmouthed churls telling them to 'buck up and stop whining.'"
Conrad was nodding; he'd seen the same thing himself and was convinced there was a special place in hell for oafs like that. He glanced quickly at Angel, knowing that her complete lack of empathy for others and her habitual callous realism meant she could easily say the wrong thing. He saw her nod slightly; she had understood the caution even if she didn't comprehend the reasoning behind it.
Raw Eddie was laying on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. The lower half of his body was covered with a tent-like structure that kept any weight off his crippled legs. Angel walked over to his bed, avoiding the instrumentation that surrounded him and looked down. "Welcome back, Eddie."
Conrad couldn't help remember that was what he had said to Angel when she had recovered from her coma in Rome. The difference in response though was total. Angel had reacted to the words instantly. Eddie showed no signs of having heard them and just continued to stare at the ceiling. In the background, a nurse came in and checked the instruments attached to him. Conrad understood why; modern hospital instrumentation recorded all that data automatically but a manual back-up and check never hurt and, anyway, it was an excuse for a nurse to keep a close-quarters eye on Eddie.
"Good evening, Eddie. I'm Conrad and this is Angel. Sir Humphrey and Lady Florentia asked us to come up and look into what happened to you."
"Why bother? Nothing will change." Eddie's voice was listless and remote. "Nothing anybody does will help me now."
"Even if that were true, which it isn't, finding out what happened to you can prevent the same things happening to other people. That's a worthwhile objective; while you've been in a coma, two people have been killed. Angel and I are sure that the same people who injured you were responsible." Conrad had thought very carefully about how to phrase that. It was strictly true by the rule but omitted the reason why the two of them were so sure of the facts. That left Eddie with the hope that he could help bring the people who had attacked him to justice. It would be something of a goal for him, a tiny hint of a replacement for the ambitions he had lost.
"Why should I want that? Nobody helped me." Now, there was bitterness in Eddie's voice. Conrad almost cheered; bitterness was a big step forward over the emotional vacuum that had been inside Eddie's mind. It was a sign that the depression that enveloped him was beginning to lift. When somebody was lost in the fog, even finding the dimmest light was an achievement.
"They did." Angel was terse. "Prema, Penny and Barbara heard what was happening and came down the hill to help you. That was very brave and, in my opinion, very foolish of them. Can you imagine what would have happened to them if they'd run into the five men who attacked you? Those men heard them coming though and ran off. The girls saved your life, Eddie. Now they are demoralized by the thought that they didn’t do more."
"It was seven men, not five."
"Seven men." Angel looked significantly at Conrad. "That is important. This is a bigger gang than we thought. And a lot more violent."
Conrad agreed, much as he would have liked not to have done. There was also the point that Eddie’s comment had been a contribution and it was necessary to show him it was a valuable one. "It makes the threats they made against the children a whole world more credible."
Mentioning the threats made against children marked another stage in reality penetrating the depression that blanketed Eddie's mind. As Conrad well-knew, most humans had a built-in drive to protect children and the news that his help could protect children under threat added to the pressure bringing Eddie out of the darkness. "What children?'
"We hired some detectorists to help survey the site. A group of Traveling Folk who had set up a detecting business, working for archeological digs. We checked them out carefully of course and they're quite highly regarded by the academic community. One of the women went to the village to buy food and other supplies and got beaten up. Then, she was told that if the detectorists didn’t get out of the area, they'd cripple her children." Angel looked virtuous; she'd only distorted the truth a little. "So, we need to know as much as we can to make sure the travelers' kids don’t get caught up in this."
Eddie sighed. "All right, you win. The first day I was up in my assigned roundhouse, I spent most of the day digging out the clay. It's a very heavy, dense clay and shifting it is hard work, especially since the roundhouse was too small to get a backhoe in. We were able to clear the way in but the rest of the clay had to come out by hand. Well, as we started to dig, we found farming implements at the bottom of the mud. Mostly, just the metal but the further we dug in, the more we found with wooden parts still in place. That's an incredible find, usually the wood rots away quickly so we only have guesswork as to what it looked like. These finds showed what the wooden parts really were. They really were treasures. Also, there were only farming implements there. No coins, no decorative material, no weapons. That points to animal husbandry there, not general farming. I already had a theory that the site was a self-contained fortified base probably blocking access to richer farmland in the bend of the river. This all made it look good. Everybody was excited about it.
"Next day we went up there, the site had been pillaged. All the area we had dug over had been grubbed up, all the treasures taken away, all the stratification lost. With the integrity of the site gone, everything from it was worthless. Even the precious wooden finds had gone. They'll dry out and crumble to dust now. We could have got analysis to tell us so much about what the community was like and it's all gone. We could have got tree rings from the wood and dated everything exactly. All gone.
"So I decided to go up there the next night and watch over it. I thought the nighthawkers were just a couple of local lads trying to get beer money and if they saw the site was watched they'd give it up. I got there and there were half a dozen men came out of nowhere. They grabbed me and asked where the treasure was. I told them what we'd found and showed them something that was a centimeter or so down in the clay. They knocked me around a bit, I've had worse on the football field, but their hearts weren't in it. They knew I was telling the truth and there was no gold or silver there. That roundhouse was a barn, more or less. Then another man came up, the one who heads the TV crew. When he was told there was nothing valuable there, he went mad. Started shouting and swearing, got angrier and angrier. Kept screaming about how he was being cheated by the archeologists, how they made him waste his time on a stupid TV show, how the 'experts' liked to make him look stupid on prime-time. He went on and on, getting really worked up. Already, the others were edging away and a couple of them had already slipped off into the darkness. That's when Bald Rick grabbed a spade and swung it at my leg. It hit my knee and I felt the bones go. I screamed and fell down and he kept hitting me and hitting me. I was screaming and one of the other men there said something about 'them coming'. Bald Rick swung at my head, and I woke up here.
"And we have a conviction." Angel ended the story, privately marveling at the foolishness of people who left witnesses alive. "Eddie, did you see any of the people from the site up at your dig that night?"
"No, they were all strangers. I got a feel they were locals, you know. What could I have done?"
Angel raised an eyebrow. "For starters you could have learned rugby instead of football. You'd have stood a better chance of getting clear then."
Eddie burst out laughing, great gasps of laughter that echoed around the room. When he finally caught his breath, he shook his head. "I needed that."
"There'll be some officers coming from the Mercia Police fairly soon. They'll need a full statement from you. You'll also need to try and identify the men who attacked you. Richard Baldwin will be arrested and charged as soon as we find him." Conrad looked at Angel who nodded her agreement. “Until they arrive, try and think of everything you saw and heard. At this point, even the tiniest detail is critical.”
“I’ll do that. It’s not as if I’ve anything else to do. The way I see it, I’ve lost everything I wanted to do with my life. I’ve lost my archaeology career, any hope of going into professional sport, I’m going to be in a wheel-chair for the rest of my life. What girl was going to want me now? Except out of pity of course, and I won’t have that.”
Conrad was looking thoughtful as he and Angel left the room. Once they were in the corridor, he stopped. "Angel, I need to make a telephone call. Do you know if there's a public call box around here?"
"They're getting scarce these days. As more people get these, the old-fashioned call boxes are dying out. Who do you want to call?"
"Isolda Rowley. I think her talking to Eddie will do him some good and having Humpty owe her one will be useful for her."
Angel took out her own portable telephone and handed it over. "On speed dial, under I. Give her my best wishes please."
Conrad nodded and included the message within a conversation. He'd barely handed the telephone back when it buzzed again. Angel took one look at the incoming number display and accepted the call. When she'd finished, she looked very thoughtful.
"What's the matter, Angel?"
"Richard Baldwin was found just off the main road heading south. He was driving a University Landrover as we had expected. What we didn’t expect was that he seems to have been run off the road. There's no trace of the loot from the fake dig; my guess would be that whoever ran him off, stole the box."
"Is he dead?"
"No, not even close. He was unconscious when found but he's recovering already and has been cautioned that was Pete Boyd by the way. He wants to know if you can come and, in his words, close the deal on him."
"I can try and find out what happened, yes."
Angel smiled to herself at the different slant Conrad had placed on Boyd's request. "Another thing, two of the three TV crew we identified with violent records have also left the site and disappeared. They also took a Landrover, one of the Archeology in Action ones. I think we have what was going on here pretty much identified now. Two teams, one inside Archeology in Action identifying targets, a team of locally-recruited dumb muscle wrecking the sites and Baldwin coordinating the two. I think he intended, or was supposed, to keep them apart but the local muscle group knew he was called Bald Rick by the students. That was a pretty important piece of information. It suggests the two groups have met and spoken together. Probably at the Pub, Conrad. There's only one in the village and it's not hard to see the two groups meeting, talking and finding out they were two halves of the same operation. They realized that Baldwin was going to rip them off, so they ambushed him and stole the loot. Remember they still think it’s real."
"That's the simplest explanation and thus probably the right one. It kind of fits the picture I'm getting of Baldwin. It seems that he assumed everything would happen the way he wanted it to, simply because that was how he wanted it. He assumed that people would do whatever he wanted simply because that was what he wanted as well."
"I've met a lot of people like that. Whether he was working for somebody else or he was on his own, that you'll have to find out."
"Won’t you be with me?"
Angel shook her head. "Not this time; I have to go down to London and I need to get there fast. Mao-lee can go into the interrogation room with you and do the menacing presence bit. Working with you will do her prestige some good as well and she deserves it."
Conrad had been thinking the situation over. "I completely screwed this up, didn’t I? The Nighthawkers aren't even involved. You mentioned some alternatives right at the start but I was so focused on the Nighthawkers that they just fell through the cracks. I just assumed they were guilty and they weren't."
"They may be, they may be the dumb muscle I mentioned. But no, they're not a key part of this. We can charge Baldwin with being the brains behind all this and we can charge the six lemons with an assortment of offenses ranging from murder downwards. On Eddie's testimony alone, we can do Baldwin for attempted murder. Since all seven of them were involved in the same crimes, we can charge them all even if they never swung a blow. That's our only chance of getting the ones inside the site by the way. We've got positive evidence that they didn’t take part in the attack on Raw Eddie and weren't present at the murder of Mayhew and Hatton. A conspiracy charge may be all we can get and they'd have a good chance of walking on that."
"And we still haven't worked out why all of this took place." Conrad shook his head. "I'm convinced this was a revenge plot but why? By the time we count everybody up, there’s more than a dozen people involved. We haven't uncovered anything that would justify an effort on this scale. Nothing we've learned seems to make sense."
Angel shrugged. "We'll get there. Conrad, I've got to get to the roof; there's an Air Taxi Rotodyne coming in to pick me up. Mao-lee is on her way here to collect you and take you to the Lincoln shop. I'll join you there when I get back from London."
"Will Inspector de Llorente please go to the landing pad on the roof immediately? Your Air Taxi has arrived." Conrad watched her disappearing into the crowds and sighed slightly. She was up to something, he knew it, and religiously didn’t want to know what it was.
Superintendent Boyd's Office. Lincoln City Center Police Station
"What do you think, Conrad?" Angel had helped herself to some police station coffee and only her rum-seared taste-buds prevented her choking on it.
"Their stories mostly line up. They're local muscle, hired to fetch and carry, and everything went sour on them. Their claim they 'went easy' on Catherine Mayhew doesn't hold up. She was hurt much worse than her friend, despite his efforts to protect her. I don’t think they were lying, not deliberately. They knew that was what they should have done so they remembered doing it, not what they really did. The bit about stopping them being burned alive though, that rang true to me. They couldn’t have known we'd already picked up on the accelerant."
Another young woman had stood with the condemned at Medina del Campo in Castile. It was whispered that Calamoya de Vallesteros had turned down a suitor and that denouncing her for witchcraft had been his revenge. Perhaps she was the cleverest of them all for she had immediately made a very full and detailed confession and sincerely repented her sins. Her reward was around her neck, a rope. Of all the eight, she was the only one who would be strangled before the fires were set. Conrad closed his eyes and said a prayer for her soul, one of the many innocents he had sent to a terrible death. The six men in detention had made the same decision for their two victims as Calamoya de Vallesteros had for herself. Better a quick death than the agony that otherwise awaited them.
He was spared from pursuing that line further by the sound of Angel's portable telephone ringing. She answered it and spoke in her prison voice that made overhearing her words almost impossible. When the conversation was finished, she looked at Conrad without any discernable emotion. "Richard Baldwin, AKA Bald Rick is missing along with one of the University Landrovers. Also, you were right in suggesting his accomplices had records. The police have identified three of the TV crew as having convictions for varying forms of violence. All joined the TV crew since 1996 when the night hawking really started. All were hired on the recommendation of Baldwin."
"Could be a coincidence, Angel. We're still not really sure we have a full handle on what's going on here."
"We'll know soon enough. Peter is sending some of his minions over to bring them in." This time it was Angel who was stopped from going further by her telephone ringing. The conversation was very brief. "Conrad, Eddie has come around and is coherent. We need to get over there fast.
County Hospital Louth, Lincolnshire.
"Inspector, it's good to see you again. We never got a chance to thank you properly for helping out with those two intruders. What happened with them?" Matron Sabine Mohr still remembered how Stephen Hatton and Catherine Mayhew had disrespected the nurses under her authority.
"I'm sorry, I can't comment on an ongoing investigation." Angel smiled and in the background, Conrad was hard-put to stop himself laughing. Angel was beginning to sound like a police officer as well as behave like one. That brought a curious thought to his mind. Does Angel behave like a gangster only because she has been surrounded by such people all of her life? Is she simply mimicking gangster behavior the way she mimics police officers?
"Of course, sorry, I shouldn’t have asked." Mohr looked around. "You've come to see Eddie? He's recovered consciousness but he's in terrible depression. We're more worried about that now than anything else."
"Not a marrow embolism?"
"We call them Fat Embolism Syndrome these days. Or FES for short. That problem is fading now, Eddie dodged a bullet there." Mohr looked at the two guns hanging under Angel's shoulders and glanced away hastily. "It was a very serious problem while he was unconscious but now he's improving, the body can usually deal with it by itself. The depression though, it is so bad we have him on a discreet suicide watch. That helps us watch for convulsions as well of course. They're the first symptoms of FES. Come along, I'll take you in. Be very patient with him though, acute depression is an awful thing and some people don’t understand how bad it can be. I've seen people who could have been saved driven to suicide by a few loudmouthed churls telling them to 'buck up and stop whining.'"
Conrad was nodding; he'd seen the same thing himself and was convinced there was a special place in hell for oafs like that. He glanced quickly at Angel, knowing that her complete lack of empathy for others and her habitual callous realism meant she could easily say the wrong thing. He saw her nod slightly; she had understood the caution even if she didn't comprehend the reasoning behind it.
Raw Eddie was laying on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. The lower half of his body was covered with a tent-like structure that kept any weight off his crippled legs. Angel walked over to his bed, avoiding the instrumentation that surrounded him and looked down. "Welcome back, Eddie."
Conrad couldn't help remember that was what he had said to Angel when she had recovered from her coma in Rome. The difference in response though was total. Angel had reacted to the words instantly. Eddie showed no signs of having heard them and just continued to stare at the ceiling. In the background, a nurse came in and checked the instruments attached to him. Conrad understood why; modern hospital instrumentation recorded all that data automatically but a manual back-up and check never hurt and, anyway, it was an excuse for a nurse to keep a close-quarters eye on Eddie.
"Good evening, Eddie. I'm Conrad and this is Angel. Sir Humphrey and Lady Florentia asked us to come up and look into what happened to you."
"Why bother? Nothing will change." Eddie's voice was listless and remote. "Nothing anybody does will help me now."
"Even if that were true, which it isn't, finding out what happened to you can prevent the same things happening to other people. That's a worthwhile objective; while you've been in a coma, two people have been killed. Angel and I are sure that the same people who injured you were responsible." Conrad had thought very carefully about how to phrase that. It was strictly true by the rule but omitted the reason why the two of them were so sure of the facts. That left Eddie with the hope that he could help bring the people who had attacked him to justice. It would be something of a goal for him, a tiny hint of a replacement for the ambitions he had lost.
"Why should I want that? Nobody helped me." Now, there was bitterness in Eddie's voice. Conrad almost cheered; bitterness was a big step forward over the emotional vacuum that had been inside Eddie's mind. It was a sign that the depression that enveloped him was beginning to lift. When somebody was lost in the fog, even finding the dimmest light was an achievement.
"They did." Angel was terse. "Prema, Penny and Barbara heard what was happening and came down the hill to help you. That was very brave and, in my opinion, very foolish of them. Can you imagine what would have happened to them if they'd run into the five men who attacked you? Those men heard them coming though and ran off. The girls saved your life, Eddie. Now they are demoralized by the thought that they didn’t do more."
"It was seven men, not five."
"Seven men." Angel looked significantly at Conrad. "That is important. This is a bigger gang than we thought. And a lot more violent."
Conrad agreed, much as he would have liked not to have done. There was also the point that Eddie’s comment had been a contribution and it was necessary to show him it was a valuable one. "It makes the threats they made against the children a whole world more credible."
Mentioning the threats made against children marked another stage in reality penetrating the depression that blanketed Eddie's mind. As Conrad well-knew, most humans had a built-in drive to protect children and the news that his help could protect children under threat added to the pressure bringing Eddie out of the darkness. "What children?'
"We hired some detectorists to help survey the site. A group of Traveling Folk who had set up a detecting business, working for archeological digs. We checked them out carefully of course and they're quite highly regarded by the academic community. One of the women went to the village to buy food and other supplies and got beaten up. Then, she was told that if the detectorists didn’t get out of the area, they'd cripple her children." Angel looked virtuous; she'd only distorted the truth a little. "So, we need to know as much as we can to make sure the travelers' kids don’t get caught up in this."
Eddie sighed. "All right, you win. The first day I was up in my assigned roundhouse, I spent most of the day digging out the clay. It's a very heavy, dense clay and shifting it is hard work, especially since the roundhouse was too small to get a backhoe in. We were able to clear the way in but the rest of the clay had to come out by hand. Well, as we started to dig, we found farming implements at the bottom of the mud. Mostly, just the metal but the further we dug in, the more we found with wooden parts still in place. That's an incredible find, usually the wood rots away quickly so we only have guesswork as to what it looked like. These finds showed what the wooden parts really were. They really were treasures. Also, there were only farming implements there. No coins, no decorative material, no weapons. That points to animal husbandry there, not general farming. I already had a theory that the site was a self-contained fortified base probably blocking access to richer farmland in the bend of the river. This all made it look good. Everybody was excited about it.
"Next day we went up there, the site had been pillaged. All the area we had dug over had been grubbed up, all the treasures taken away, all the stratification lost. With the integrity of the site gone, everything from it was worthless. Even the precious wooden finds had gone. They'll dry out and crumble to dust now. We could have got analysis to tell us so much about what the community was like and it's all gone. We could have got tree rings from the wood and dated everything exactly. All gone.
"So I decided to go up there the next night and watch over it. I thought the nighthawkers were just a couple of local lads trying to get beer money and if they saw the site was watched they'd give it up. I got there and there were half a dozen men came out of nowhere. They grabbed me and asked where the treasure was. I told them what we'd found and showed them something that was a centimeter or so down in the clay. They knocked me around a bit, I've had worse on the football field, but their hearts weren't in it. They knew I was telling the truth and there was no gold or silver there. That roundhouse was a barn, more or less. Then another man came up, the one who heads the TV crew. When he was told there was nothing valuable there, he went mad. Started shouting and swearing, got angrier and angrier. Kept screaming about how he was being cheated by the archeologists, how they made him waste his time on a stupid TV show, how the 'experts' liked to make him look stupid on prime-time. He went on and on, getting really worked up. Already, the others were edging away and a couple of them had already slipped off into the darkness. That's when Bald Rick grabbed a spade and swung it at my leg. It hit my knee and I felt the bones go. I screamed and fell down and he kept hitting me and hitting me. I was screaming and one of the other men there said something about 'them coming'. Bald Rick swung at my head, and I woke up here.
"And we have a conviction." Angel ended the story, privately marveling at the foolishness of people who left witnesses alive. "Eddie, did you see any of the people from the site up at your dig that night?"
"No, they were all strangers. I got a feel they were locals, you know. What could I have done?"
Angel raised an eyebrow. "For starters you could have learned rugby instead of football. You'd have stood a better chance of getting clear then."
Eddie burst out laughing, great gasps of laughter that echoed around the room. When he finally caught his breath, he shook his head. "I needed that."
"There'll be some officers coming from the Mercia Police fairly soon. They'll need a full statement from you. You'll also need to try and identify the men who attacked you. Richard Baldwin will be arrested and charged as soon as we find him." Conrad looked at Angel who nodded her agreement. “Until they arrive, try and think of everything you saw and heard. At this point, even the tiniest detail is critical.”
“I’ll do that. It’s not as if I’ve anything else to do. The way I see it, I’ve lost everything I wanted to do with my life. I’ve lost my archaeology career, any hope of going into professional sport, I’m going to be in a wheel-chair for the rest of my life. What girl was going to want me now? Except out of pity of course, and I won’t have that.”
Conrad was looking thoughtful as he and Angel left the room. Once they were in the corridor, he stopped. "Angel, I need to make a telephone call. Do you know if there's a public call box around here?"
"They're getting scarce these days. As more people get these, the old-fashioned call boxes are dying out. Who do you want to call?"
"Isolda Rowley. I think her talking to Eddie will do him some good and having Humpty owe her one will be useful for her."
Angel took out her own portable telephone and handed it over. "On speed dial, under I. Give her my best wishes please."
Conrad nodded and included the message within a conversation. He'd barely handed the telephone back when it buzzed again. Angel took one look at the incoming number display and accepted the call. When she'd finished, she looked very thoughtful.
"What's the matter, Angel?"
"Richard Baldwin was found just off the main road heading south. He was driving a University Landrover as we had expected. What we didn’t expect was that he seems to have been run off the road. There's no trace of the loot from the fake dig; my guess would be that whoever ran him off, stole the box."
"Is he dead?"
"No, not even close. He was unconscious when found but he's recovering already and has been cautioned that was Pete Boyd by the way. He wants to know if you can come and, in his words, close the deal on him."
"I can try and find out what happened, yes."
Angel smiled to herself at the different slant Conrad had placed on Boyd's request. "Another thing, two of the three TV crew we identified with violent records have also left the site and disappeared. They also took a Landrover, one of the Archeology in Action ones. I think we have what was going on here pretty much identified now. Two teams, one inside Archeology in Action identifying targets, a team of locally-recruited dumb muscle wrecking the sites and Baldwin coordinating the two. I think he intended, or was supposed, to keep them apart but the local muscle group knew he was called Bald Rick by the students. That was a pretty important piece of information. It suggests the two groups have met and spoken together. Probably at the Pub, Conrad. There's only one in the village and it's not hard to see the two groups meeting, talking and finding out they were two halves of the same operation. They realized that Baldwin was going to rip them off, so they ambushed him and stole the loot. Remember they still think it’s real."
"That's the simplest explanation and thus probably the right one. It kind of fits the picture I'm getting of Baldwin. It seems that he assumed everything would happen the way he wanted it to, simply because that was how he wanted it. He assumed that people would do whatever he wanted simply because that was what he wanted as well."
"I've met a lot of people like that. Whether he was working for somebody else or he was on his own, that you'll have to find out."
"Won’t you be with me?"
Angel shook her head. "Not this time; I have to go down to London and I need to get there fast. Mao-lee can go into the interrogation room with you and do the menacing presence bit. Working with you will do her prestige some good as well and she deserves it."
Conrad had been thinking the situation over. "I completely screwed this up, didn’t I? The Nighthawkers aren't even involved. You mentioned some alternatives right at the start but I was so focused on the Nighthawkers that they just fell through the cracks. I just assumed they were guilty and they weren't."
"They may be, they may be the dumb muscle I mentioned. But no, they're not a key part of this. We can charge Baldwin with being the brains behind all this and we can charge the six lemons with an assortment of offenses ranging from murder downwards. On Eddie's testimony alone, we can do Baldwin for attempted murder. Since all seven of them were involved in the same crimes, we can charge them all even if they never swung a blow. That's our only chance of getting the ones inside the site by the way. We've got positive evidence that they didn’t take part in the attack on Raw Eddie and weren't present at the murder of Mayhew and Hatton. A conspiracy charge may be all we can get and they'd have a good chance of walking on that."
"And we still haven't worked out why all of this took place." Conrad shook his head. "I'm convinced this was a revenge plot but why? By the time we count everybody up, there’s more than a dozen people involved. We haven't uncovered anything that would justify an effort on this scale. Nothing we've learned seems to make sense."
Angel shrugged. "We'll get there. Conrad, I've got to get to the roof; there's an Air Taxi Rotodyne coming in to pick me up. Mao-lee is on her way here to collect you and take you to the Lincoln shop. I'll join you there when I get back from London."
"Will Inspector de Llorente please go to the landing pad on the roof immediately? Your Air Taxi has arrived." Conrad watched her disappearing into the crowds and sighed slightly. She was up to something, he knew it, and religiously didn’t want to know what it was.
Re: 2008 - Eye of the Nighthawker
Chapter Eleven
Saloon Bar, The Drunken Duck, Houndsditch, London.
"Hello Brian. It's good of you to see me at such short notice."
"Evenin 'Angel. Like you 'o mee' 'he family. Dis is my bruvver Charlie, my boys Mark, Andy an' Colin, an' my girl Sharon. Family, 'his is Angel, proper good friend 'o us she is."
"I hear congratulations are in order Sharon? Twin boys so I'm told. That would be cause for a major celebration in a Chinese family so I got these for you. One for each boy. Have you and your husband settled on names yet?" Angel handed over a transparent envelope containing two almost perfect Roman-era gold coins and a normal letter envelope. "The envelope contains the certificate of authenticity and the receipt in case there's any trouble in the future about where they came from."
"That's kind of you, Angel. And very considerate. Thank you. We haven't finally made up our mind on names yet but Keith and Kenneth are the leading candidates." Despite her hard "east end" appearance, Sharon Frost had a neutral accent, one that Angel guessed had been carefully taught to her at a finishing school. She passed the transparent package around to be admired by everybody.
"Don'' us boys ge' a couple ov 'hose 'oo?" Mark Frost sounded hopeful.
"Give us a couple of grandkids and you migh' stand a chance lad. Legi'ima'e ones ov course." Brian Frost smiled his thanks to Angel. " Wha' can we do faw you, Angel?"
"It's come to my notice that one of our capers up near Lincoln might be stepping on the toes of one of yours. So, I'm here to apologize if that's the case and, if there is any problem, to make it right."
"We 'ave a caper runnin up naw'h, yeah. No' an impaw'an' one so no cause faw grief."
"Thank you, that's good to know. We're providing security for an archeological dig up there. There's been problems with sites being looted and the relics lifted. Last night it got serious, at least it looks that way."
" Da 'reasure 'ha' was found? tha' was in 'he papers 'his mawnin. Big 'reasure, bent overnigh'. Mos' ov 'he 'hieves go' caugh' bu' some go' away wi'h 'he loo'. Yeah, 'ha' in'erests us."
"Brian, it’s a whole load of gilded scrap lead. We make the forgeries in Bangkok and we used them as bait to catch the thieves. A little bird tells us that the two who escaped may try and sell the stuff to you. Keep it under your hat but I have a list here of everything that is in the stolen hoard. Just a word to the wise, you know?"
" 'em boys, 'hey knah i's naff?"
"They didn't at first, they must do by now. If they just dump the stuff in the river, that's one thing, if they try and sell it to you though. . . . ."
"Andy an' Colin will 'ake 'hem down 'o 'he fac'awy an' shah 'hem 'ah we make pawk scra'chings."
"If I might suggest something? The news that the so-called hoard is nothing but junk will be out in two or three days. We have to release it to protect the real site. But, if the firm calls in the coppers before then and hands the thieves and the loot over to them, the cops will look good and so will you. They'll owe you big-time and the papers will be full of how a patriotic local family saved some of the national heritage. So, pretty important people will smile on you. And it'll save my people the job of hunting them down and making an example of them."
"All 'ha' 'reasure is naff? wha''s i' waw'h, rahlly?"
"It's 10 kilograms. Solid 18 carat gold would be worth around 400,000 sovereigns. Badly-gilded lead, less than 200. My guess is that they'll try and take you for 40,000. By the way, if you want to get into the gold relics business, we can sell you 'Fine Art Reproductions' of antique coins and jewelry. They're made of 18 carat gold and top quality work but the thing is, importing and selling them into the UK isn't illegal as long as you don't pretend they are anything other than reproductions. People buy them as investments. Gold's a lot cheaper in the Far East than it is here, so the profit margin is pretty big. For both of us."
After Angel had left, Frost looked at his family. "Sharon, 'ave we 'eard back from 'hose 'wo 'ryin 'o sell us 'he 'reasure?"
"We have. They claim they have ten kilos of antique gold and want 40,000 sovereigns for it. That would have been a good deal if it had been genuine."
"All righ', call 'hem back, 'ell 'hem 'hey are on, an' ge' 'hem 'o come over. Then call our friend down 'he nick an' ask 'im 'o come along wi'h a few friends. Ge' 'im 'ere firs' an' we'll explain wha''s 'appenin. An', Sharon, no need 'o men'ion Angel's par' in 'his. Jus' remember 'ah good a friend to our firm she is."
Interview Room Three. Lincoln City Center Police Station
Leaning against the wall in one corner of the interview room, Mao-lee couldn’t help thinking that Richard Baldwin had the smuggest, most eminently punchable face she had seen in a long time. All her unarmed combat instructors had cautioned her against punching people with a closed fist, pointing out it was a very good way to break important fingers. Yet, even they had to concede there were some people whose faces required the impact of a closed fist in much the same way that a cat required the occasional dish of cream.
The way the situation was developing had, however, caused Mao-lee to reflect that she had missed her chance. Baldwin's face was losing its customary expression of petulant smugness and was beginning to show panic as the net started to close in on him. His denials had become more fragmented as the cage of evidence surrounding him became more and more obvious. As his pretensions of innocence crumbled, the panic on his face was being supplemented by furious anger.
Conrad knew this was the final stage; soon Baldwin's rage would get the better of his caution and the truth would come pouring out. Now was the time to try and feed that anger while remaining a quiet and polite source of support. "So the two people who robbed you were part of your team? That must have been incredibly disappointing for you. To be betrayed like that."
Baldwin was going redder as the way he had been brought down sank in. He was managing to keep control of himself but the margin by which he was doing so had been worn down until it was threadbare. Conrad decided just one push was necessary. "Richard, what I don't understand is what was going on here. This is obviously a revenge caper but we can’t understand why. Everything that happens here is so trivial."
"Trivial? Trivial!!" Baldwin exploded, all the penned-up ourage and anger suddenly erupting from inside him. "Do you know what those people have done to me? I'm an actor, top-billing. I'm a star. People wait for months to see me on stage and stay home nights to watch my television series. I'm a top-rank media personality and what do I do here? I introduce a bunch of bumbling nonentities and infantile students and let them prattle on about their idiotic digs. They hog the camera and spew garbage about how important some piece of bent and rusty metal is. They treat me like dirt, push me out the way when I try to get in shot and hold up some piece of junk as if it's of any importance. They make fun of me every chance they get. You know what the women here call me? Bald Rick! When I tried to get friendly with them, they laughed at me, said I was old enough to be their father. One of them turned me down and sniggered at her friends while she did so. Then, a few minutes later she slipped into Rawling's tent. I heard them laughing in there, laughing at me. Well, I showed them what their precious sites were worth. And I crippled her boyfriend. Let's see how much fun she gets out of him now.
"I wanted them to hurt and I'd been reading about the nighthawkers. The ones who looted archeological sites, so I set up my own group. Used the real ones as cover. I knew some crew who had trouble finding work so I brought them in to keep an ear on what was happening. When the diggers found something good, we'd come back and wreck it. That really hit those bastards where it hurt. At first we thought we could make enough money selling relics to cover the cost but the bastards running this thing had been lying to us. They called everything treasure but it wasn't worth anything. Just a pound or two. But the looks on their faces when their precious sites were grubbed up, that was worth more than a few sovereigns I can tell you."
"So how did you pay for all this?"
"Didn’t need to. The crew I knew couldn’t get work so I gave them good jobs on the program and that did for them. Salary and staying in the industry, having their names in the credits, that was enough. I had enough people wanting in so I could rotate them round a bit. That way it wasn't obvious from comparing work lists to raids what was going on. They were even really grateful for me getting them the jobs. That was the real laugh, the archeology people were paying to have all their work wrecked. Then two of the ungrateful bastards try and bash my head in when they run me off the road."
"Ingratitude is a terrible sin." Conrad shook his head sadly while secretly feeling the urge to wash his hands and rinse out his ears. "But you certainly made Rawlings pay though, didn’t you?"
"Sure did, the little shit had been telling everybody how he had found real treasures in the roundhouse he was digging so we went there to smash it all up and steal anything worth having, But there was nothing there, just bits of old wood. Next night we went back to see what we had missed and he was there. So we got the truth out of him and I smashed up his legs to teach him a lesson. Then I …... " Baldwin's eyes bulged with shock as he realized all that he had just said. It was something Conrad had seen all too many times, the sudden realization that a suspect had confirmed all the suspicions that existed around him.
After that, Baldwin collapsed completely. He confessed to hiring two local muscle to go to Eddie Rawling's room and finish him off by smothering him with a pillow. He had always intended to kill them afterwards in order to sever the connection between him and the killing of Rawlings. The savagery with which they had been killed was due to a simple factor. Catherine Mayhew had been unusually tall, at least six inches taller than Baldwin and she had teased him about it. That had been enough to send him into another murderous rage and led to his attempt to burn her alive as soon as he had the chance. His failure to do so caused him to go into yet another one of his rages during which he promised to kill Roger Stone, the youngster who had shot the two victims in the Minotaur's Cave. Conrad realized that by pulling in Baldwin first, they had probably saved the young man's life. That lifted his feelings a little from the depression brought on by the realization that Baldwin was nothing more than a hate-filled ball of revenge-seeking malice. They were raised a little more when he heard the characteristic whistle of a Rotodyne landing. That meant Angel had returned from London.
Saloon Bar, The Drunken Duck, Houndsditch, London.
"Good evening gentlemen." Sharon Frost looked at the two men who had just entered the bar. "You are Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones."
"We are. And you are, lady?" The leader of the two, Toby Chatham put a contemptuous sneer on the word ‘lady’.
"I'm Sharon Frost, Brian Frost's daughter. I handle the money side of things for the family firm. And what do we have here?"
"You know damned well, Sharon. 10 kilograms of antique gold, yours for 40,000 sovereigns. And don’t try and bargain us down, you know very well its worth ten times that."
Sharon Frost stuck her fingers in her mouth and gave a piercing whistle that had certainly not been learned at her finishing school. In fact, she had learned it while acting as a look-out for her brothers while they broke into parked cars. This time, instead of warning of the approach of police officers, it summoned a detective inspector and three uniformed constables from their hiding place behind the kitchen curtain.
"Thanks, Sharon. Tell Brian we owe him one for this." Detective Inspector Gordon Waddell watched while his constables handcuffed the two suspects. At some point in the process, an envelope of cash was transferred from Sharon's hands to his. One of the two criminals being arrested saw the movement.
"You set us up you bitch." Toby Chatham was unable to conceal his anger at being trapped.
Sharon blew him a kiss. Constable Danny Price leaned forward to say very quietly. "You just called Mr. Frost's favorite daughter a bitch. Right good thumping you'll get for that I reckon."
The Saloon Bar, The White Swan, Lincoln High Street, Lincoln.
"You weren't long, Angel." Boyd took a pull from his pint and admired the rest in the tankard. The White Swan did a good pint.
"450 miles per hour eats up distance." Angel had her traditional glass of Bacardi 151 in her hand and the sight made Conrad feel that all was well with the world once more. "You got this all wrapped up then?"
Conrad sipped at his brandy, enjoying the fact that Angel's enforced abstemiousness was over and he didn’t have to feel guilty about enjoying a drink any more. "Baldwin confessed. It was as we thought, finally, a revenge crime. He felt that he wasn't being properly respected by the archeologists working on the sites, that they kept him out of the limelight he thought he deserved. He thought he was being ridiculed and, in the American term, generally disrespected. He wanted revenge on them all so he attacked the sites they were working on. When I pushed him, he exploded into rage and went into a harangue that lasted several minutes. We got it all on tape. He wanted to kill Catherine Mayhew slowly because she was taller than him and joked about it. He had Shimza beaten up because she turned him down when he made advances to her. That was another bad move on his part. We showed Shimza pictures of past TV crews and she picked the two out."
"He should have known better than to try." Boyd finished off his beer and had another sent over along with another glass of rum for Angel. "Those Travelling Folk may seem free and easy but beneath it all, they have a very strict moral code they inherited from the Rroma. Includes no sex before marriage. Baldwin claimed she 'insulted' him by refusing his advances. Our shrink had a go at him and says he suffers from antisocial personality disorder. He's in the cells now, cursing everybody and screaming 'this isn’t over'."
"You need a new shrink. The ASPD concept is obsolete. From what you have said, Baldwin is a classic sociopath, impulsive and aggressive, consistently failing to maintain regular work and fulfill his financial commitments. He acts on the spur of the moment and never plans carefully. When everything falls apart, he constantly uses alleged and imaginary grievances to explain his repeated failure and thus as an excuse to hurt and mistreat others. That's almost the opposite of people like me. My shrink tells me a lot of people in show business are sociopaths. Baldwin was convinced that he had some sort of divine right to be in charge of everything and everybody around him."
Angel looked at her rum with almost maternal affection. "I should have spotted him earlier; I looked at his television career on the flight back and his series never lasted long despite their ratings. He doesn’t get work anymore because people just won’t sign up for projects with him in them. It's those damned sociopaths who give us psychopaths a bad name."
Angel shook her head. She had never experienced any form of empathy herself until she had met Conrad. Even now, the number of people with whom she was empathic was tiny and the 'empathy' was mostly faked. She was also aware that she had no conscience and used people as pawns, just as she had used the Frost family 'firm' to bring down the remaining members of Baldwin's group. For all that, she knew that she inspired loyalty in people for reasons she did not and could not understand. She simply treated people in the ways that got the best results for her. Baldwin had alienated everybody.
"Can I ask something about you two?" Boyd was being tentative, aware he was stepping, if not across a line, right on it.
"Do we sleep together? No." Angel smiled to herself and took a gulp of her rum. "The next question is usually, how many people have I killed? The answer to that is I don’t know. I've never counted."
Boyd gulped slightly, somehow that answer was more chilling than even an astronomic number could have been. "No, I was going to ask if Conrad always does the questioning. And what happens if people won’t say anything or want a lawyer?"
Conrad looked thoughtful. "There are some times when Angel opens up the interview, especially if we need to make it clear to people how bad a situation they're in. I take over soon afterwards. I've no objection to a lawyer being present, it's getting much more common now and the lawyer can be a useful tool. As for not saying anything, that's the best possible route to take but few people have the willpower to do it."
Angel had also been thinking about the question. "When I was a young girl, just starting my career in organized crime, a man told me that it was best to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. I was about to ask him why, but I was a kid and he was a grown-up so I took his advice and shot him instead. That was when I realized the problem with that philosophy. When I first met Conrad he showed me the virtues of asking questions. I've never lost sight of that."
She was interrupted by a burst of laughter from the bar. The more junior officers had gathered there, tactfully distant from the senior police. Mao-lee was sitting with a glass of wine in her hand and a group of two young policemen and an equally young policewoman around her. The ‘informal debriefing’ had reached the point where it was slowly breaking up when she made her farewells to her admirers and thanked Boyd for his hospitality before leaving with the policewoman. The two young constables looked disappointed with an 'ah well, can't win them all' overtone.
"I wonder what would have happened if Baldwin had come on to her and attacked her when she turned him down." Boyd was still trying to explore the complex web of relationships that were forming between his officers and the security team.
"Before we caught him, she'd have talked her way out of it. That's what Angel's group train their people to do, talk their way out of a situation if they can. Now, having seen what he had done to other women, I think she would have really hurt him." Conrad looked around at the bar. "This was a great informal de-briefing Peter, thank you for hosting it. Now, Angel and I have a few loose ends to tie up and we'll be out of your hair."
"Well, good luck. And Angel, please don’t forget about that lecture you promised us."
Saloon Bar, The Drunken Duck, Houndsditch, London.
"Hello Brian. It's good of you to see me at such short notice."
"Evenin 'Angel. Like you 'o mee' 'he family. Dis is my bruvver Charlie, my boys Mark, Andy an' Colin, an' my girl Sharon. Family, 'his is Angel, proper good friend 'o us she is."
"I hear congratulations are in order Sharon? Twin boys so I'm told. That would be cause for a major celebration in a Chinese family so I got these for you. One for each boy. Have you and your husband settled on names yet?" Angel handed over a transparent envelope containing two almost perfect Roman-era gold coins and a normal letter envelope. "The envelope contains the certificate of authenticity and the receipt in case there's any trouble in the future about where they came from."
"That's kind of you, Angel. And very considerate. Thank you. We haven't finally made up our mind on names yet but Keith and Kenneth are the leading candidates." Despite her hard "east end" appearance, Sharon Frost had a neutral accent, one that Angel guessed had been carefully taught to her at a finishing school. She passed the transparent package around to be admired by everybody.
"Don'' us boys ge' a couple ov 'hose 'oo?" Mark Frost sounded hopeful.
"Give us a couple of grandkids and you migh' stand a chance lad. Legi'ima'e ones ov course." Brian Frost smiled his thanks to Angel. " Wha' can we do faw you, Angel?"
"It's come to my notice that one of our capers up near Lincoln might be stepping on the toes of one of yours. So, I'm here to apologize if that's the case and, if there is any problem, to make it right."
"We 'ave a caper runnin up naw'h, yeah. No' an impaw'an' one so no cause faw grief."
"Thank you, that's good to know. We're providing security for an archeological dig up there. There's been problems with sites being looted and the relics lifted. Last night it got serious, at least it looks that way."
" Da 'reasure 'ha' was found? tha' was in 'he papers 'his mawnin. Big 'reasure, bent overnigh'. Mos' ov 'he 'hieves go' caugh' bu' some go' away wi'h 'he loo'. Yeah, 'ha' in'erests us."
"Brian, it’s a whole load of gilded scrap lead. We make the forgeries in Bangkok and we used them as bait to catch the thieves. A little bird tells us that the two who escaped may try and sell the stuff to you. Keep it under your hat but I have a list here of everything that is in the stolen hoard. Just a word to the wise, you know?"
" 'em boys, 'hey knah i's naff?"
"They didn't at first, they must do by now. If they just dump the stuff in the river, that's one thing, if they try and sell it to you though. . . . ."
"Andy an' Colin will 'ake 'hem down 'o 'he fac'awy an' shah 'hem 'ah we make pawk scra'chings."
"If I might suggest something? The news that the so-called hoard is nothing but junk will be out in two or three days. We have to release it to protect the real site. But, if the firm calls in the coppers before then and hands the thieves and the loot over to them, the cops will look good and so will you. They'll owe you big-time and the papers will be full of how a patriotic local family saved some of the national heritage. So, pretty important people will smile on you. And it'll save my people the job of hunting them down and making an example of them."
"All 'ha' 'reasure is naff? wha''s i' waw'h, rahlly?"
"It's 10 kilograms. Solid 18 carat gold would be worth around 400,000 sovereigns. Badly-gilded lead, less than 200. My guess is that they'll try and take you for 40,000. By the way, if you want to get into the gold relics business, we can sell you 'Fine Art Reproductions' of antique coins and jewelry. They're made of 18 carat gold and top quality work but the thing is, importing and selling them into the UK isn't illegal as long as you don't pretend they are anything other than reproductions. People buy them as investments. Gold's a lot cheaper in the Far East than it is here, so the profit margin is pretty big. For both of us."
After Angel had left, Frost looked at his family. "Sharon, 'ave we 'eard back from 'hose 'wo 'ryin 'o sell us 'he 'reasure?"
"We have. They claim they have ten kilos of antique gold and want 40,000 sovereigns for it. That would have been a good deal if it had been genuine."
"All righ', call 'hem back, 'ell 'hem 'hey are on, an' ge' 'hem 'o come over. Then call our friend down 'he nick an' ask 'im 'o come along wi'h a few friends. Ge' 'im 'ere firs' an' we'll explain wha''s 'appenin. An', Sharon, no need 'o men'ion Angel's par' in 'his. Jus' remember 'ah good a friend to our firm she is."
Interview Room Three. Lincoln City Center Police Station
Leaning against the wall in one corner of the interview room, Mao-lee couldn’t help thinking that Richard Baldwin had the smuggest, most eminently punchable face she had seen in a long time. All her unarmed combat instructors had cautioned her against punching people with a closed fist, pointing out it was a very good way to break important fingers. Yet, even they had to concede there were some people whose faces required the impact of a closed fist in much the same way that a cat required the occasional dish of cream.
The way the situation was developing had, however, caused Mao-lee to reflect that she had missed her chance. Baldwin's face was losing its customary expression of petulant smugness and was beginning to show panic as the net started to close in on him. His denials had become more fragmented as the cage of evidence surrounding him became more and more obvious. As his pretensions of innocence crumbled, the panic on his face was being supplemented by furious anger.
Conrad knew this was the final stage; soon Baldwin's rage would get the better of his caution and the truth would come pouring out. Now was the time to try and feed that anger while remaining a quiet and polite source of support. "So the two people who robbed you were part of your team? That must have been incredibly disappointing for you. To be betrayed like that."
Baldwin was going redder as the way he had been brought down sank in. He was managing to keep control of himself but the margin by which he was doing so had been worn down until it was threadbare. Conrad decided just one push was necessary. "Richard, what I don't understand is what was going on here. This is obviously a revenge caper but we can’t understand why. Everything that happens here is so trivial."
"Trivial? Trivial!!" Baldwin exploded, all the penned-up ourage and anger suddenly erupting from inside him. "Do you know what those people have done to me? I'm an actor, top-billing. I'm a star. People wait for months to see me on stage and stay home nights to watch my television series. I'm a top-rank media personality and what do I do here? I introduce a bunch of bumbling nonentities and infantile students and let them prattle on about their idiotic digs. They hog the camera and spew garbage about how important some piece of bent and rusty metal is. They treat me like dirt, push me out the way when I try to get in shot and hold up some piece of junk as if it's of any importance. They make fun of me every chance they get. You know what the women here call me? Bald Rick! When I tried to get friendly with them, they laughed at me, said I was old enough to be their father. One of them turned me down and sniggered at her friends while she did so. Then, a few minutes later she slipped into Rawling's tent. I heard them laughing in there, laughing at me. Well, I showed them what their precious sites were worth. And I crippled her boyfriend. Let's see how much fun she gets out of him now.
"I wanted them to hurt and I'd been reading about the nighthawkers. The ones who looted archeological sites, so I set up my own group. Used the real ones as cover. I knew some crew who had trouble finding work so I brought them in to keep an ear on what was happening. When the diggers found something good, we'd come back and wreck it. That really hit those bastards where it hurt. At first we thought we could make enough money selling relics to cover the cost but the bastards running this thing had been lying to us. They called everything treasure but it wasn't worth anything. Just a pound or two. But the looks on their faces when their precious sites were grubbed up, that was worth more than a few sovereigns I can tell you."
"So how did you pay for all this?"
"Didn’t need to. The crew I knew couldn’t get work so I gave them good jobs on the program and that did for them. Salary and staying in the industry, having their names in the credits, that was enough. I had enough people wanting in so I could rotate them round a bit. That way it wasn't obvious from comparing work lists to raids what was going on. They were even really grateful for me getting them the jobs. That was the real laugh, the archeology people were paying to have all their work wrecked. Then two of the ungrateful bastards try and bash my head in when they run me off the road."
"Ingratitude is a terrible sin." Conrad shook his head sadly while secretly feeling the urge to wash his hands and rinse out his ears. "But you certainly made Rawlings pay though, didn’t you?"
"Sure did, the little shit had been telling everybody how he had found real treasures in the roundhouse he was digging so we went there to smash it all up and steal anything worth having, But there was nothing there, just bits of old wood. Next night we went back to see what we had missed and he was there. So we got the truth out of him and I smashed up his legs to teach him a lesson. Then I …... " Baldwin's eyes bulged with shock as he realized all that he had just said. It was something Conrad had seen all too many times, the sudden realization that a suspect had confirmed all the suspicions that existed around him.
After that, Baldwin collapsed completely. He confessed to hiring two local muscle to go to Eddie Rawling's room and finish him off by smothering him with a pillow. He had always intended to kill them afterwards in order to sever the connection between him and the killing of Rawlings. The savagery with which they had been killed was due to a simple factor. Catherine Mayhew had been unusually tall, at least six inches taller than Baldwin and she had teased him about it. That had been enough to send him into another murderous rage and led to his attempt to burn her alive as soon as he had the chance. His failure to do so caused him to go into yet another one of his rages during which he promised to kill Roger Stone, the youngster who had shot the two victims in the Minotaur's Cave. Conrad realized that by pulling in Baldwin first, they had probably saved the young man's life. That lifted his feelings a little from the depression brought on by the realization that Baldwin was nothing more than a hate-filled ball of revenge-seeking malice. They were raised a little more when he heard the characteristic whistle of a Rotodyne landing. That meant Angel had returned from London.
Saloon Bar, The Drunken Duck, Houndsditch, London.
"Good evening gentlemen." Sharon Frost looked at the two men who had just entered the bar. "You are Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones."
"We are. And you are, lady?" The leader of the two, Toby Chatham put a contemptuous sneer on the word ‘lady’.
"I'm Sharon Frost, Brian Frost's daughter. I handle the money side of things for the family firm. And what do we have here?"
"You know damned well, Sharon. 10 kilograms of antique gold, yours for 40,000 sovereigns. And don’t try and bargain us down, you know very well its worth ten times that."
Sharon Frost stuck her fingers in her mouth and gave a piercing whistle that had certainly not been learned at her finishing school. In fact, she had learned it while acting as a look-out for her brothers while they broke into parked cars. This time, instead of warning of the approach of police officers, it summoned a detective inspector and three uniformed constables from their hiding place behind the kitchen curtain.
"Thanks, Sharon. Tell Brian we owe him one for this." Detective Inspector Gordon Waddell watched while his constables handcuffed the two suspects. At some point in the process, an envelope of cash was transferred from Sharon's hands to his. One of the two criminals being arrested saw the movement.
"You set us up you bitch." Toby Chatham was unable to conceal his anger at being trapped.
Sharon blew him a kiss. Constable Danny Price leaned forward to say very quietly. "You just called Mr. Frost's favorite daughter a bitch. Right good thumping you'll get for that I reckon."
The Saloon Bar, The White Swan, Lincoln High Street, Lincoln.
"You weren't long, Angel." Boyd took a pull from his pint and admired the rest in the tankard. The White Swan did a good pint.
"450 miles per hour eats up distance." Angel had her traditional glass of Bacardi 151 in her hand and the sight made Conrad feel that all was well with the world once more. "You got this all wrapped up then?"
Conrad sipped at his brandy, enjoying the fact that Angel's enforced abstemiousness was over and he didn’t have to feel guilty about enjoying a drink any more. "Baldwin confessed. It was as we thought, finally, a revenge crime. He felt that he wasn't being properly respected by the archeologists working on the sites, that they kept him out of the limelight he thought he deserved. He thought he was being ridiculed and, in the American term, generally disrespected. He wanted revenge on them all so he attacked the sites they were working on. When I pushed him, he exploded into rage and went into a harangue that lasted several minutes. We got it all on tape. He wanted to kill Catherine Mayhew slowly because she was taller than him and joked about it. He had Shimza beaten up because she turned him down when he made advances to her. That was another bad move on his part. We showed Shimza pictures of past TV crews and she picked the two out."
"He should have known better than to try." Boyd finished off his beer and had another sent over along with another glass of rum for Angel. "Those Travelling Folk may seem free and easy but beneath it all, they have a very strict moral code they inherited from the Rroma. Includes no sex before marriage. Baldwin claimed she 'insulted' him by refusing his advances. Our shrink had a go at him and says he suffers from antisocial personality disorder. He's in the cells now, cursing everybody and screaming 'this isn’t over'."
"You need a new shrink. The ASPD concept is obsolete. From what you have said, Baldwin is a classic sociopath, impulsive and aggressive, consistently failing to maintain regular work and fulfill his financial commitments. He acts on the spur of the moment and never plans carefully. When everything falls apart, he constantly uses alleged and imaginary grievances to explain his repeated failure and thus as an excuse to hurt and mistreat others. That's almost the opposite of people like me. My shrink tells me a lot of people in show business are sociopaths. Baldwin was convinced that he had some sort of divine right to be in charge of everything and everybody around him."
Angel looked at her rum with almost maternal affection. "I should have spotted him earlier; I looked at his television career on the flight back and his series never lasted long despite their ratings. He doesn’t get work anymore because people just won’t sign up for projects with him in them. It's those damned sociopaths who give us psychopaths a bad name."
Angel shook her head. She had never experienced any form of empathy herself until she had met Conrad. Even now, the number of people with whom she was empathic was tiny and the 'empathy' was mostly faked. She was also aware that she had no conscience and used people as pawns, just as she had used the Frost family 'firm' to bring down the remaining members of Baldwin's group. For all that, she knew that she inspired loyalty in people for reasons she did not and could not understand. She simply treated people in the ways that got the best results for her. Baldwin had alienated everybody.
"Can I ask something about you two?" Boyd was being tentative, aware he was stepping, if not across a line, right on it.
"Do we sleep together? No." Angel smiled to herself and took a gulp of her rum. "The next question is usually, how many people have I killed? The answer to that is I don’t know. I've never counted."
Boyd gulped slightly, somehow that answer was more chilling than even an astronomic number could have been. "No, I was going to ask if Conrad always does the questioning. And what happens if people won’t say anything or want a lawyer?"
Conrad looked thoughtful. "There are some times when Angel opens up the interview, especially if we need to make it clear to people how bad a situation they're in. I take over soon afterwards. I've no objection to a lawyer being present, it's getting much more common now and the lawyer can be a useful tool. As for not saying anything, that's the best possible route to take but few people have the willpower to do it."
Angel had also been thinking about the question. "When I was a young girl, just starting my career in organized crime, a man told me that it was best to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. I was about to ask him why, but I was a kid and he was a grown-up so I took his advice and shot him instead. That was when I realized the problem with that philosophy. When I first met Conrad he showed me the virtues of asking questions. I've never lost sight of that."
She was interrupted by a burst of laughter from the bar. The more junior officers had gathered there, tactfully distant from the senior police. Mao-lee was sitting with a glass of wine in her hand and a group of two young policemen and an equally young policewoman around her. The ‘informal debriefing’ had reached the point where it was slowly breaking up when she made her farewells to her admirers and thanked Boyd for his hospitality before leaving with the policewoman. The two young constables looked disappointed with an 'ah well, can't win them all' overtone.
"I wonder what would have happened if Baldwin had come on to her and attacked her when she turned him down." Boyd was still trying to explore the complex web of relationships that were forming between his officers and the security team.
"Before we caught him, she'd have talked her way out of it. That's what Angel's group train their people to do, talk their way out of a situation if they can. Now, having seen what he had done to other women, I think she would have really hurt him." Conrad looked around at the bar. "This was a great informal de-briefing Peter, thank you for hosting it. Now, Angel and I have a few loose ends to tie up and we'll be out of your hair."
"Well, good luck. And Angel, please don’t forget about that lecture you promised us."
Re: 2008 - Eye of the Nighthawker
Chapter Twelve
County Hospital Louth, Lincolnshire.
"Hi, Eddie. We're just finishing up and we thought we would drop in and let you know what was happening. We've arrested more than a dozen people for the attack on you and most of them are going down for a long time. Richard Baldwin is being charged with two murders, one attempted murder, assault, conspiracy to defraud and whatever else the Prosecution Service can come up with. Assuming he isn’t found incompetent to stand trial, they're asking for life without possibility of parole. The six dipshits who got you at site are facing the same charges and they'll be in for twenty-five before they can even apply for parole. Then there's five dumbasses who were the inside men. They're all being charged as well.” Angel grinned nastily. “Two of them have the additional, very unofficial but still very real charge of disrespecting the daughter of a gangland boss hanging over them. That makes it one of those ‘oh crap’ moments for them.”
Conrad looked at Eddie carefully, noting he was still depressed but a lot more responsive. “The show is getting a new 'star' presenter to take Baldwin's place. Well-known, up-and-coming comedian so I'm told. Everybody on Archeology in Action has had enough of fading dramatic actors."
"Thank you for coming to tell me." Eddie tried to smile at her. "I suppose it's some consolation they'll never hurt anybody else like this. While I've been laying here, I've been trying to think of things I can do now but I'm not coming up with any answers. I'm done."
"No, you're not." The voice came from the door. "I'm Detective Inspector Isolda Rowley. 'Sol for short. We share a problem, you and I."
Isolda made her way in, maneuvering her crutches with the skill born of long practice. She reached a chair and sat down with obvious relief. "Hi Angel. Good to see you and Conrad again. Eddie, Angel saved my life once."
"Did somebody break your legs too?" Eddie was curious; he'd never seen an obviously disabled police officer before.
"No, my legs are fine. It’s just I got shot through the spine and can’t move them worth a damn. It's not total, I can stand up and even walk a step or two without my crutches but functionally, they're gone. When I was a uniformed constable, my partner and I were ambushed by a couple of thugs. They shot us both down and sat back to watch us die. Angel and her friends arrived just in time; they looked after me while she went into the kill zone to deal with the thugs. Angel killed them both before they could even realize what she was doing. Then her friend, Achillea, took me in hand and very patiently taught me how to make the best of what I had left. I owe them both for my life and I try to pay them forward by helping other people with similar injuries."
"Wait a minute, you said you were a constable when you were shot and now you're an inspector? You kept on working?"
"Detective Inspector. I've been promoted twice since then. I can’t walk a beat, obviously. But I can sit at a desk and do analytical work. More and more police work is scientific analysis and data crunching these days so I do that. Amazing what one can find on the cyberweb if one knows where to look. You can probably do the same; detective work and archeology have a lot in common so I am told. You may even be able to work on a field dig again; spadework is obviously out but there's a lot you can do. Metal detectors, ground penetrating radar, thermal imaging, all that sort of thing is getting to be the new way of the world. You can make your name in that; in fact you could be one of the first specialists in that area and will probably get known as a pathfinder. That's what Achillea taught me; don’t worry about what you can't do, find out what you can and exploit it for all you're worth."
Eddie's mouth twitched. "You've given that speech before."
"Of course. All police officers are supposed to pick a civilian community service and work at it. Mine is helping people who have been disabled. We always start off with a conversation like this. By the way, and before I forget, how are you Angel?"
Angel lifted up her shirt to show the wound in her abdomen. Conrad was startled. The great crimson disk that had marked where the ricin had played hell with her body was breaking up and some areas were already back to Angel's normal light-olive skin tone. "Doc Toscano said it would fade fast once I reached a certain point. Eddie, when I was gut-shot and dying in hospital, 'Sol sent me a card. It said, 'I beat this, so can you.' And I did. I can even drink over-proof rum again."
"Hurrah." Conrad's voice came from the background. "Much less grumpy now."
"I can also kill people again, Conrad." Angel said with a voice laden with sugar. The laugh that went around the room broke down a lot of barriers.
Isolda shook her head. There were times when Conrad and Angel sounded like a long-married couple. “Anyway, Eddie, I spoke to Doctor Hardy on the way here and he’s mightily impressed with the work the detectorists are doing at the Castle. So much so that he’s writing a paper about the new sensors available for archeological digs and how they can affect how digs are carried out. He calls it Geo-physics. When you get out of here, you’re invited to take part in the studies. Don’t answer now, just think it over? While you do, take a look at this.”
She handed over a picture of what looked like a small tractor towing a large disk mounted on a trailer. Eddie studied it with a slight frown on his face. “What is this?”
“Ground-penetrating radar mounted on a domestic tractor made in India. The sensor is actually a modular kit so the same base vehicle can carry metal detectors or other sensors. Before you ask, no, it isn’t being designed for you. It was actually designed for the armed forces to hunt for buried things like mines. They'd use a push-trailer for that of course. The equipment is too heavy for a person to carry so this is used for a preliminary sweep of the site. Then there are the drones, no reason why you can't learn to fly them. Any more than that, you’ll have to ask Doctor Hardy. He’ll be coming in this afternoon to speak with you about your future. You do have one, it’s down to you to decide what it will be.”
Eddie looked at the picture, obviously trying to envisage how the equipment would be used on a field dig. Then his face shut down again. “But I still won’t . . .”
Isolda understood instantly what he was thinking. “Get a girl? Or a boy? We share that, Eddie. What man is going to want a woman who can’t move anything below her waist, yes?”
Eddie nodded. Isolda grinned in triumph and held up one hand. She was wearing an engagement ring, one Angel judged as being relatively inexpensive but in good taste. “Surprise!”
Conrad smiled in genuine delight. “Who’s the lucky man, ‘Sol?”
“An old friend of ours, Detective Inspector Terence Gregory. Terry took Angel’s advice to heart and, after a couple of major achievements, is considered a high-flier. Since we’re both DIs we can get married without any problems. That’s why we waited a little before making it official.”
“Congratulations, ‘Sol.” To Angel the words were essentially meaningless, both Isolda and Conrad knew it. What they did appreciate was that she had realized they were appropriate and gone to the trouble of saying them.
“Thanks Angel. Eddie, when people fall in love, they do so with the whole package, not just one part of it. Our disability is a part of the package, no more than that. When you meet the right partner, it won’t even be an important part. So, don’t sweat it. Your life is still there. It’s just going to be a bit different, that’s all.”
Weydown House, Sir Humphrey Appleday's Residence, Weydown Road, Haslemere, Surrey
"Conrad, Angel, in view of the results that those with a keen understanding of the limitations under which you worked might well regard as excellent, indeed bordering on the outstanding, it would be hard, if not churlish to recognize that your undoubted skill and expertise despite the somewhat nebulous and inexplicit nature of your remit and the arguably inaccurate and misleading nature of the information with which you were initially provided, has led to a result that even from the marginal and peripheral position occupied by Lady Florentia and myself can only be regarded as highly satisfactory and which has greatly aided the influence of the Cabinet Office on the central deliberations and decisions within the political process that are intended to expedite the proposed aim of instituting a revision of the country's policy with regard to the conservation and preservation of our national heritage and establishing a closer control of the staff allowed to work in association with archeological explorations, admitting of course that a case, some might say a very strong case, for increasing the funding allocated to restructuring the conservation of remaining items of national importance in such a way as to make unnecessary the matter of your liquidation of the antagonists in this most unfortunate affair and ensure its removal from your immediate agenda although due recognition will continue to be made in the form of the recommended rewards of your associates who have made valuable contributions to the final and most laudable outcome."
Privately, Angel wondered exactly what Brian Frost would feel when he got the official letter advising him that he was being proposed for a knighthood in recognition for "services to the preservation of the national heritage". In her opinion, once the news had come out that a leading member of the "East End community" had been instrumental in recovering the stolen treasure and detaining those who had stolen it, some sort of official reward had been inevitable. When, a few days later, it had been revealed that the treasure had been a hoax perpetrated by a rival university, Baldwin and his cohorts had become objects of national ridicule. Not so Frost and his firm who, as far as they had known, had turned down nearly half a million sovereigns in favor of defending the country's heritage. As a leader in the Daily Sketch had reminded everybody, they hadn't known it was a hoax when they made that grand gesture. It was not something that any government that wanted to remain popular could ignore.
"Eddie wrote to us from hospital the other day." Lady Florentia smiled gently and that made it obvious to Conrad just how unhappy she had been at the time of their first visit. "He will still be in hospital for months but he will be studying geo-physics when he gets out. I'm not sure what that is but it all sounds very exciting. He asked me to thank you both for the way you snapped him out of his depression. And Isolda of course."
There was a pause in the conversation when the staff brought dinner in. A rack of lamb was expertly carved by the cook and delivered to the table along with a selection of vegetables. To her great delight, Angel found she had the rare-cooked center chops to herself. The Appleday household were excellent hosts. "Lady Florentia, this lamb is great. Just the way I like it. Did Eddie tell you he's likely to be working with us when he starts his studies again? Part of his studies will be flying drones used for site surveillance."
"Drones, or equivalent remotely-piloted air vehicles, provided under lease or other mutually agreeable financial arrangements, by Dragon Security Consultants?" Sir Humphrey was looking keenly at Angel.
"Initially at least. We're beginning to learn just how useful those things can be. The ones we buy come from Australia and are really expensive now. Give them a few years and the price will come down a lot. Then universities, police departments and so on can afford their own."
"I fear that we will have to seriously consider the implementation of regulations on the use of remotely-piloted vehicles with special emphasis on the privacy implications as they pertain to the citizens of this country and to possible risks inherent in flying such vehicles over populated areas, not neglecting the very real risks posed by the use of armed drones by what are essentially civilian organizations. To that end, I will recommend that we set up an interdepartmental committee with fairly broad terms of reference so that at the end of the day we'll be in the position to think through the various implications and arrive at a decision based on long-term considerations rather than rush prematurely into precipitate and possibly ill-conceived action which might well have unforeseen repercussions."
"You'll need technical experts to provide information on the operational side of things. We can help you there." Angel seemed earnestly helpful which was enough to make Conrad suspicious. Then it dawned on him that if her people took part in the committee's deliberations, the 14K would know the contents of the final report long before it was published and be well-placed to accommodate the conclusions. It was the same basic strategy that The Seer and his group in America had used to mitigate the threats posed by Theodore Roosevelt's anti-trust regulations.
"People, no discussion of work at the dinner table. Alexis will be furious if he finds out and he may throw the salad dressing at you." Lady Florentia did not seem unduly disturbed by the prospect of Alexis Soyer storming in and hurling pots of salad dressing at her guests. Then again, Conrad reflected, it is most unlikely that Lady Florentia would be unduly disturbed by anything short of a major local uprising and even then she would only request the kitchen staff to delay desert while she and Angel fought off the rioting natives. Come to think of it, Lady Florentia and Angel are a truly terrifying combination. If they'd been together at the time of the Afghan War. I could feel really sorry for the Afghan tribesmen. The picture of the local inhabitants of Haslemere rising in tumultuous rebellion made him chuckle to himself. Then he reflected that it wasn't so out-of-the-question as he had initially thought. Sixty years before, the fathers and grandfathers of the present generation of Haslemerites had done that despite being outgunned and with no real hope of victory. It had been one of the countless small battles that had taken place fought to win a few hours’ time at best and where victory had been measured by the defeat not being quite as bad as it could have been,
"This isn't work related, not really." Angel put down the bone from one of her lamb cutlets down. It was polished white where she had cleaned every fragment of flesh, a sight that would undoubtedly delight Chef Soyer. "We've been asked to up the security presence at Washingborough Castle by adding at least one more team there. Apparently, the University is making it their top priority for their next five year financial plan with the aim of entirely uncovering the whole site Apparently, after the theft of the treasure, its recovery and the exposure of the hoax, several companies have offered to help fund the work. The plan is to cover the whole site with a building to protect it from the weather and create a living museum there."
"That'll cost a fortune." Conrad was trying to envisage the sort of building that could cover a site as large as the Castle.
"They have a good start on raising the money and they haven’t even started the official campaign yet." Angel addressed herself to another cutlet. The pause meant that Conrad had time to wonder if the companies bidding for the contract to build the museum would include those Angel might regard as 'friendly'. Of course they will. I would say Angel has already put the word around to her friends and allies that potentially lucrative contracts are pending. I bet a souvenir shop selling imitations of period jewelry and so on will be part of the complex. And a restaurant selling 'ye Olde Iron-Age Fayre'. I suspect that will make Hardly Phil furious.
"What is a living museum, Angel?" Lady Florentia hadn’t heard the term before.
"I asked Phil that myself. Apparently the plan is to restore several of the roundhouses to original condition and then groups of volunteers will live in them to see how it was done. How they could really dress, eat, farm and so on. Everything now is guesswork based on finds. Do it for real, and the answers may be different."
"One might presume that, given their highly detailed wealth of information on these aspects of life in that period, although obviously the need to maintain secrecy as to the sources of that information must continue to be maintained in the short term at least, Branwen and Achillea will be providing discrete information from their specific viewpoints and ensuring that the managers of the new living museum do not stray far from the verisimilitude of the era which they intend to both illustrate and investigate?"
Conrad was the first to translate that one. "Achillea is already doing something similar at the Flavian Amphitheater dig in Rome although there, the professor in charge of the project knows that she is long-lived and fought in the amphitheater when it was at its peak. Branwen obviously has a lot of information she can contribute and Lagertha also. It is surprising though, how little we collectively know about life in a farming settlement like this. Most of our people who survive from that era are high-level aristocrats whose knowledge of the world of commoners is limited. We know how they made treaties that effected the lives of entire kingdoms but not how they made a loaf of bread. I suspect The Seer, for example, will be as surprised as any modern-day archeologist at details of the daily lives practiced by the people whose crops his armies trampled down."
Angel glanced at him with a lifted eyebrow. Even with her very limited ability to understand human relations, she could detect the bitterness in his voice.
Lady Florentia did as well and adroitly changed the subject. "I suppose we'll have to tell Loki what is going on here. Although I understand he still thinks there is a warrant out for his arrest after the Shergar business."
"I think Achillea picking him up by the throat and slamming him against a wall might have left a more lasting impression." Angel sounded reflective. "It certainly did on the wall."
Conrad had recovered his good humor after his momentary lapse. "Cristi might be the one he should be afraid of. She got back at Angel by ruffling her hair - and lived."
"It's true." Angel acknowledged. "I was good with it, in the circumstances that was fair enough; I'd frightened her and she took due and dispassionate revenge."
Lady Florentia took a deep breath. "Well, for that act of undoubted bravery, it sounds like a toast to Cristi is in order. I don't know how good a physician she is, but she certainly is not short of courage. To Cristi, everybody!"
County Hospital Louth, Lincolnshire.
"Hi, Eddie. We're just finishing up and we thought we would drop in and let you know what was happening. We've arrested more than a dozen people for the attack on you and most of them are going down for a long time. Richard Baldwin is being charged with two murders, one attempted murder, assault, conspiracy to defraud and whatever else the Prosecution Service can come up with. Assuming he isn’t found incompetent to stand trial, they're asking for life without possibility of parole. The six dipshits who got you at site are facing the same charges and they'll be in for twenty-five before they can even apply for parole. Then there's five dumbasses who were the inside men. They're all being charged as well.” Angel grinned nastily. “Two of them have the additional, very unofficial but still very real charge of disrespecting the daughter of a gangland boss hanging over them. That makes it one of those ‘oh crap’ moments for them.”
Conrad looked at Eddie carefully, noting he was still depressed but a lot more responsive. “The show is getting a new 'star' presenter to take Baldwin's place. Well-known, up-and-coming comedian so I'm told. Everybody on Archeology in Action has had enough of fading dramatic actors."
"Thank you for coming to tell me." Eddie tried to smile at her. "I suppose it's some consolation they'll never hurt anybody else like this. While I've been laying here, I've been trying to think of things I can do now but I'm not coming up with any answers. I'm done."
"No, you're not." The voice came from the door. "I'm Detective Inspector Isolda Rowley. 'Sol for short. We share a problem, you and I."
Isolda made her way in, maneuvering her crutches with the skill born of long practice. She reached a chair and sat down with obvious relief. "Hi Angel. Good to see you and Conrad again. Eddie, Angel saved my life once."
"Did somebody break your legs too?" Eddie was curious; he'd never seen an obviously disabled police officer before.
"No, my legs are fine. It’s just I got shot through the spine and can’t move them worth a damn. It's not total, I can stand up and even walk a step or two without my crutches but functionally, they're gone. When I was a uniformed constable, my partner and I were ambushed by a couple of thugs. They shot us both down and sat back to watch us die. Angel and her friends arrived just in time; they looked after me while she went into the kill zone to deal with the thugs. Angel killed them both before they could even realize what she was doing. Then her friend, Achillea, took me in hand and very patiently taught me how to make the best of what I had left. I owe them both for my life and I try to pay them forward by helping other people with similar injuries."
"Wait a minute, you said you were a constable when you were shot and now you're an inspector? You kept on working?"
"Detective Inspector. I've been promoted twice since then. I can’t walk a beat, obviously. But I can sit at a desk and do analytical work. More and more police work is scientific analysis and data crunching these days so I do that. Amazing what one can find on the cyberweb if one knows where to look. You can probably do the same; detective work and archeology have a lot in common so I am told. You may even be able to work on a field dig again; spadework is obviously out but there's a lot you can do. Metal detectors, ground penetrating radar, thermal imaging, all that sort of thing is getting to be the new way of the world. You can make your name in that; in fact you could be one of the first specialists in that area and will probably get known as a pathfinder. That's what Achillea taught me; don’t worry about what you can't do, find out what you can and exploit it for all you're worth."
Eddie's mouth twitched. "You've given that speech before."
"Of course. All police officers are supposed to pick a civilian community service and work at it. Mine is helping people who have been disabled. We always start off with a conversation like this. By the way, and before I forget, how are you Angel?"
Angel lifted up her shirt to show the wound in her abdomen. Conrad was startled. The great crimson disk that had marked where the ricin had played hell with her body was breaking up and some areas were already back to Angel's normal light-olive skin tone. "Doc Toscano said it would fade fast once I reached a certain point. Eddie, when I was gut-shot and dying in hospital, 'Sol sent me a card. It said, 'I beat this, so can you.' And I did. I can even drink over-proof rum again."
"Hurrah." Conrad's voice came from the background. "Much less grumpy now."
"I can also kill people again, Conrad." Angel said with a voice laden with sugar. The laugh that went around the room broke down a lot of barriers.
Isolda shook her head. There were times when Conrad and Angel sounded like a long-married couple. “Anyway, Eddie, I spoke to Doctor Hardy on the way here and he’s mightily impressed with the work the detectorists are doing at the Castle. So much so that he’s writing a paper about the new sensors available for archeological digs and how they can affect how digs are carried out. He calls it Geo-physics. When you get out of here, you’re invited to take part in the studies. Don’t answer now, just think it over? While you do, take a look at this.”
She handed over a picture of what looked like a small tractor towing a large disk mounted on a trailer. Eddie studied it with a slight frown on his face. “What is this?”
“Ground-penetrating radar mounted on a domestic tractor made in India. The sensor is actually a modular kit so the same base vehicle can carry metal detectors or other sensors. Before you ask, no, it isn’t being designed for you. It was actually designed for the armed forces to hunt for buried things like mines. They'd use a push-trailer for that of course. The equipment is too heavy for a person to carry so this is used for a preliminary sweep of the site. Then there are the drones, no reason why you can't learn to fly them. Any more than that, you’ll have to ask Doctor Hardy. He’ll be coming in this afternoon to speak with you about your future. You do have one, it’s down to you to decide what it will be.”
Eddie looked at the picture, obviously trying to envisage how the equipment would be used on a field dig. Then his face shut down again. “But I still won’t . . .”
Isolda understood instantly what he was thinking. “Get a girl? Or a boy? We share that, Eddie. What man is going to want a woman who can’t move anything below her waist, yes?”
Eddie nodded. Isolda grinned in triumph and held up one hand. She was wearing an engagement ring, one Angel judged as being relatively inexpensive but in good taste. “Surprise!”
Conrad smiled in genuine delight. “Who’s the lucky man, ‘Sol?”
“An old friend of ours, Detective Inspector Terence Gregory. Terry took Angel’s advice to heart and, after a couple of major achievements, is considered a high-flier. Since we’re both DIs we can get married without any problems. That’s why we waited a little before making it official.”
“Congratulations, ‘Sol.” To Angel the words were essentially meaningless, both Isolda and Conrad knew it. What they did appreciate was that she had realized they were appropriate and gone to the trouble of saying them.
“Thanks Angel. Eddie, when people fall in love, they do so with the whole package, not just one part of it. Our disability is a part of the package, no more than that. When you meet the right partner, it won’t even be an important part. So, don’t sweat it. Your life is still there. It’s just going to be a bit different, that’s all.”
Weydown House, Sir Humphrey Appleday's Residence, Weydown Road, Haslemere, Surrey
"Conrad, Angel, in view of the results that those with a keen understanding of the limitations under which you worked might well regard as excellent, indeed bordering on the outstanding, it would be hard, if not churlish to recognize that your undoubted skill and expertise despite the somewhat nebulous and inexplicit nature of your remit and the arguably inaccurate and misleading nature of the information with which you were initially provided, has led to a result that even from the marginal and peripheral position occupied by Lady Florentia and myself can only be regarded as highly satisfactory and which has greatly aided the influence of the Cabinet Office on the central deliberations and decisions within the political process that are intended to expedite the proposed aim of instituting a revision of the country's policy with regard to the conservation and preservation of our national heritage and establishing a closer control of the staff allowed to work in association with archeological explorations, admitting of course that a case, some might say a very strong case, for increasing the funding allocated to restructuring the conservation of remaining items of national importance in such a way as to make unnecessary the matter of your liquidation of the antagonists in this most unfortunate affair and ensure its removal from your immediate agenda although due recognition will continue to be made in the form of the recommended rewards of your associates who have made valuable contributions to the final and most laudable outcome."
Privately, Angel wondered exactly what Brian Frost would feel when he got the official letter advising him that he was being proposed for a knighthood in recognition for "services to the preservation of the national heritage". In her opinion, once the news had come out that a leading member of the "East End community" had been instrumental in recovering the stolen treasure and detaining those who had stolen it, some sort of official reward had been inevitable. When, a few days later, it had been revealed that the treasure had been a hoax perpetrated by a rival university, Baldwin and his cohorts had become objects of national ridicule. Not so Frost and his firm who, as far as they had known, had turned down nearly half a million sovereigns in favor of defending the country's heritage. As a leader in the Daily Sketch had reminded everybody, they hadn't known it was a hoax when they made that grand gesture. It was not something that any government that wanted to remain popular could ignore.
"Eddie wrote to us from hospital the other day." Lady Florentia smiled gently and that made it obvious to Conrad just how unhappy she had been at the time of their first visit. "He will still be in hospital for months but he will be studying geo-physics when he gets out. I'm not sure what that is but it all sounds very exciting. He asked me to thank you both for the way you snapped him out of his depression. And Isolda of course."
There was a pause in the conversation when the staff brought dinner in. A rack of lamb was expertly carved by the cook and delivered to the table along with a selection of vegetables. To her great delight, Angel found she had the rare-cooked center chops to herself. The Appleday household were excellent hosts. "Lady Florentia, this lamb is great. Just the way I like it. Did Eddie tell you he's likely to be working with us when he starts his studies again? Part of his studies will be flying drones used for site surveillance."
"Drones, or equivalent remotely-piloted air vehicles, provided under lease or other mutually agreeable financial arrangements, by Dragon Security Consultants?" Sir Humphrey was looking keenly at Angel.
"Initially at least. We're beginning to learn just how useful those things can be. The ones we buy come from Australia and are really expensive now. Give them a few years and the price will come down a lot. Then universities, police departments and so on can afford their own."
"I fear that we will have to seriously consider the implementation of regulations on the use of remotely-piloted vehicles with special emphasis on the privacy implications as they pertain to the citizens of this country and to possible risks inherent in flying such vehicles over populated areas, not neglecting the very real risks posed by the use of armed drones by what are essentially civilian organizations. To that end, I will recommend that we set up an interdepartmental committee with fairly broad terms of reference so that at the end of the day we'll be in the position to think through the various implications and arrive at a decision based on long-term considerations rather than rush prematurely into precipitate and possibly ill-conceived action which might well have unforeseen repercussions."
"You'll need technical experts to provide information on the operational side of things. We can help you there." Angel seemed earnestly helpful which was enough to make Conrad suspicious. Then it dawned on him that if her people took part in the committee's deliberations, the 14K would know the contents of the final report long before it was published and be well-placed to accommodate the conclusions. It was the same basic strategy that The Seer and his group in America had used to mitigate the threats posed by Theodore Roosevelt's anti-trust regulations.
"People, no discussion of work at the dinner table. Alexis will be furious if he finds out and he may throw the salad dressing at you." Lady Florentia did not seem unduly disturbed by the prospect of Alexis Soyer storming in and hurling pots of salad dressing at her guests. Then again, Conrad reflected, it is most unlikely that Lady Florentia would be unduly disturbed by anything short of a major local uprising and even then she would only request the kitchen staff to delay desert while she and Angel fought off the rioting natives. Come to think of it, Lady Florentia and Angel are a truly terrifying combination. If they'd been together at the time of the Afghan War. I could feel really sorry for the Afghan tribesmen. The picture of the local inhabitants of Haslemere rising in tumultuous rebellion made him chuckle to himself. Then he reflected that it wasn't so out-of-the-question as he had initially thought. Sixty years before, the fathers and grandfathers of the present generation of Haslemerites had done that despite being outgunned and with no real hope of victory. It had been one of the countless small battles that had taken place fought to win a few hours’ time at best and where victory had been measured by the defeat not being quite as bad as it could have been,
"This isn't work related, not really." Angel put down the bone from one of her lamb cutlets down. It was polished white where she had cleaned every fragment of flesh, a sight that would undoubtedly delight Chef Soyer. "We've been asked to up the security presence at Washingborough Castle by adding at least one more team there. Apparently, the University is making it their top priority for their next five year financial plan with the aim of entirely uncovering the whole site Apparently, after the theft of the treasure, its recovery and the exposure of the hoax, several companies have offered to help fund the work. The plan is to cover the whole site with a building to protect it from the weather and create a living museum there."
"That'll cost a fortune." Conrad was trying to envisage the sort of building that could cover a site as large as the Castle.
"They have a good start on raising the money and they haven’t even started the official campaign yet." Angel addressed herself to another cutlet. The pause meant that Conrad had time to wonder if the companies bidding for the contract to build the museum would include those Angel might regard as 'friendly'. Of course they will. I would say Angel has already put the word around to her friends and allies that potentially lucrative contracts are pending. I bet a souvenir shop selling imitations of period jewelry and so on will be part of the complex. And a restaurant selling 'ye Olde Iron-Age Fayre'. I suspect that will make Hardly Phil furious.
"What is a living museum, Angel?" Lady Florentia hadn’t heard the term before.
"I asked Phil that myself. Apparently the plan is to restore several of the roundhouses to original condition and then groups of volunteers will live in them to see how it was done. How they could really dress, eat, farm and so on. Everything now is guesswork based on finds. Do it for real, and the answers may be different."
"One might presume that, given their highly detailed wealth of information on these aspects of life in that period, although obviously the need to maintain secrecy as to the sources of that information must continue to be maintained in the short term at least, Branwen and Achillea will be providing discrete information from their specific viewpoints and ensuring that the managers of the new living museum do not stray far from the verisimilitude of the era which they intend to both illustrate and investigate?"
Conrad was the first to translate that one. "Achillea is already doing something similar at the Flavian Amphitheater dig in Rome although there, the professor in charge of the project knows that she is long-lived and fought in the amphitheater when it was at its peak. Branwen obviously has a lot of information she can contribute and Lagertha also. It is surprising though, how little we collectively know about life in a farming settlement like this. Most of our people who survive from that era are high-level aristocrats whose knowledge of the world of commoners is limited. We know how they made treaties that effected the lives of entire kingdoms but not how they made a loaf of bread. I suspect The Seer, for example, will be as surprised as any modern-day archeologist at details of the daily lives practiced by the people whose crops his armies trampled down."
Angel glanced at him with a lifted eyebrow. Even with her very limited ability to understand human relations, she could detect the bitterness in his voice.
Lady Florentia did as well and adroitly changed the subject. "I suppose we'll have to tell Loki what is going on here. Although I understand he still thinks there is a warrant out for his arrest after the Shergar business."
"I think Achillea picking him up by the throat and slamming him against a wall might have left a more lasting impression." Angel sounded reflective. "It certainly did on the wall."
Conrad had recovered his good humor after his momentary lapse. "Cristi might be the one he should be afraid of. She got back at Angel by ruffling her hair - and lived."
"It's true." Angel acknowledged. "I was good with it, in the circumstances that was fair enough; I'd frightened her and she took due and dispassionate revenge."
Lady Florentia took a deep breath. "Well, for that act of undoubted bravery, it sounds like a toast to Cristi is in order. I don't know how good a physician she is, but she certainly is not short of courage. To Cristi, everybody!"