The Armada Boy (27 page)

Wesley, back in the incident room,
had come to a natural break in his paperwork. Rachel hadn't yet returned from
providing a sympathetic police presence at the Clearview Hotel.

Neil had established his base just
over the dusty parqueted floor of the village hall. Wesley left the incident
room and strolled the few yards to the side room that the archaeological unit
were using as an office. He tried the door. It was locked. Neil would be at the
dig.

Wesley could honestly say that he
was due for a break, so his conscience only nagged a little as he walked out of
the village hall and up towards the chantry.

Neil was pleased to see him. The students
needed a lot of supervision and advice, and it was good to have someone there
who wouldn't trample all over the evidence like a herd of startled elephants
... or at least that's how Neil described the first-year students. Wesley hoped
he exaggerated.

'Where's Daphne?' he asked. He had
hoped to see Dr Parsons again.

'She'll be back tomorrow. She's
taken the dagger we've found back to the university for conservation. Beautiful
piece ... gold hilt. Must have belonged to an aristocrat at a guess. Funny that
it wasn't really buried in the grave with the skeletons.. . it's almost
as if someone had placed it a couple of feet down in the freshly dug grave as
an afterthought. It's strange that some villager didn't keep something like
that for himself, don't you think?'

' Maybe people were more honest and
God-fearing in those days. '

'Come on, Wes ... who are you trying to kid? I bet you the crime rate was just
as high in 1588 as it is now ... and they didn't have your lot with their
computers and patrol cars. All they had was the parish constable and the
hangman.'

'Wonder what their clear-up rate was
like," pondered Wesley

'When can you dive again?' he said, changing the subject.

'Probably not till after the weekend.
Fancy coming down with us?'

'No thanks.' Wesley wasn't one of
nature's sailors ... a fact he'd discovered on his first trip on the
cross-Channel ferry.

'We should be nearly finished in
this part of the chapel by the weekend. We've had a lot of help,' Neil said,
nodding towards the burrowing students. 'Not all of it expert, unfortunately.
But still ... never look a gift horse and all that.'

'What have you found?'

'Seventeen graves in all. Not much
of an invasion.'

'What was the population of the village?'

'Couple of hundred?'

'But the Spaniards were trained
soldiers ... and armed…'

'And knackered from crawling out of
their wreck. The university pathology department are having a look at the
damage, but from the state of the skulls when we got them out of the ground I'd
say the poor sods were murdered. The fact that they were Spanish
and Catholic would have been enough to give the self-righteous villagers an
excuse for a spot of carnage.'

'Nothing new about prejudice.' said
Wesley sadly: he'd experienced that unpleasant commodity from time to time at
first hand.

'Sure isn't. The less appealing side
of human nature, eh?'

They stood, heads bowed, thinking of
the men who had spent four hundred years beneath the soil of a hostile land.

Wesley broke the silence. 'Anything
found in the graves?'

'Nothing much. The villagers must
have stripped the bodies of anything desirable before they were buried ...
that's what's so puzzling about that dagger we found.'

'Could it have been buried at a
later date? It was on a different
level from..

'No, it was certainly buried in the
grave - probably in the freshly dug earth - no sign of later disturbance and
it's Spanish, contemporary with the wreck. Why leave something like that buried
when you've nicked everything else? Come on. Detective Sergeant... work that
one out.'

A sound behind them, a tactful
clearing of the throat, made them turn round. They expected to see a nervous
first-year student, plucking up courage to ask advice, but instead June Mallindale
was standing next to a spoil heap, her face impassive.
She was, as Heffernan had remarked, an attractive woman. She wore tight-fitting
jeans that showed her slim figure to best advantage, and a simple blue blouse. Her
blond hair hung loose.
Although middle-aged there was something youthful about her. not well
preserved, but undeveloped.

'I hope I'm not intruding.' she said
diffidently.

Wesley introduced her to Neil, who
looked at her appreciatively.

'I've read your book ... very
interesting. You read it yet, Wes?'

'Er ... haven't had a chance. I think
Pam's started on it, though.' He thought he owed the author a brief
explanation. 'My wife's a teacher. Her class are doing a project on the
evacuation of the villages round here during the war. She'll find that part of
your
book helpful. I'm sure.'

June Mallindale smiled, a secretive
smile. 'Some of the things that went on are hardly suitable for the ears of
young children.'

'You mean the Yanks and the local
girls? I'm sure Pam'll leave that bit out.'

She was about to say something, then
she hesitated, thinking better of it. She turned to Neil, a bright smile on her
face. 'How are you getting on with the dig? I had to come and see whether you've
disproved anything I wrote in my book.'

'On the contrary. Your hypotheses
have proved to be pretty accurate. We've found seventeen graves - adult males -
with every indication they'd died of head injuries. We're having the bones
carbon-dated .. . just to make sure they're contemporary
with the wreck. No artefacts buried with them ... they'd probably been robbed
of anything decent they might have possessed. It doesn't reflect very well on
the good folk of Bereton, but that's war for you. The only thing of real
interest that we found was a
dagger... gold hilt, very fine - looked as if it had been buried as an afterthought,
perhaps in the soft soil of the freshly dug grave, rather than with the body as
a prized possession. It's certainly contemporary with the Armada ... all a bit
of a mystery why it
didn't find its way into someone's pocket.' Neil noticed that June Mallindale
was gazing beyond him, as if her mind was elsewhere.

He hoped he wasn't boring her. "Do you know anything about this grave
that's supposed to be in the church? The vicar told Wesley that one of the
Spaniards is buried up there, didn't he, Wes?'

'Yes. Under a cupboard.'

June Mallindale looked at Wesley. Il
was clear from her expression, from her body language, that something was
making her uneasy. Professional embarrassment, perhaps ... an omission from her
book?

'I really wouldn't know.'

Neil looked at Wesley enquiringly.
He too had picked up on June Mallindale's discomfort. He changed the subject.
'I wish you could see the dagger, Wes. It's quite a find. And the condition's good.
Should polish up nicely, as my old mum used to say.'

June was shuffling her feet, anxious
to be gone, worry accentuating the lines on her face and making her look older
... nearer her true age. which must have been the mid-forties at least.

'One of my wife's pupils mentioned
there was a murder round here during the war. Have you heard about it?' Wesley
asked, trying to include the woman in the conversation and make her feel more
comfortable.

The question had the reverse effect.
'No,' she snapped. 'There was nothing like that. I really must be going. Thank
you for showing me the dig, Mr Watson.'

'It's a pleasure. We'll be starting
on the buildings next week if we can get some tame students to clear the
undergrowth. Come up again... any time.'

She thanked him politely, keen to be
gone. She left as silently as she'd arrived.

'Funny woman,' commented Neil when
she was out of earshot. 'Not bad-looking, though, for her age. What do you
think rattled her?'

'It was when we mentioned the grave
in the church... and then when I mentioned the murder during the war.. .'

'Premenstrual tension ... that's
what it'll be.'

'That's your answer to everything.
You're becoming a crusty old bachelor, Neil.'

'Me? You're only jealous cause I'm
not saddled with a mortgage and a kid on the way, and far be it from me to tell
you how to do your job, Wes. but I reckon you should ask Ms Mallindale a few
questions ... she's hiding something.'

'It can't be anything to do with
Norman Openheim's murder whatever it is. She's got an alibi... I've checked.'

'You never know, Wes, you never
know. But you're the detective ... it's up to you.'

Wesley looked sceptical.

Lunch-time had its usual effect of
clearing the incident room. Rachel hadn't got much time: lunch would have to
wait. She opened her desk drawer furtively. There was only a young and inexperienced
uniformed constable on the phone at the other end of the room. He would hardly
be likely to comment on the presence of an ancient, musty-smelling file on her
desk.

She took the file out of her drawer
carefully: the thing looked as though it could disintegrate and the papers
inside were brown and fragile. At some point in their history they had been
kept somewhere damp, which hadn't helped their condition.

She turned the papers over carefully
until she found what she was looking for. There wasn't much - just a brief
report and a note that the case had been passed to the US military authorities
as it involved one of their servicemen.

She read the report slowly,
devouring every detail, every word.
A young woman, Muriel Carmichael, had gone on a date with an American
serviceman and had come home distressed with her clothing dishevelled. Her father
had made a complaint to the police. Whether the US authorities followed it up
Rachel had no
means of knowing from the records.

Then she noticed the dale - 30 May
1944. Wasn't that a few days before the D-day landings? If the case had been
passed to the Americans they would have had other things to concern them — like
liberating France. Maybe the man involved was killed. She
turned the page. As she suspected, there was a communication from the police
inspector of the time to the man's commanding officer, along with it was the
reply. The unit had moved to France on active service. In view of the
circumstances of the complaint,
and the evidence of witnesses, it was suggested that the matter should be
dropped.

Rachel bit her lip, angry that a war
should halt justice. But, being a realist, she admitted to herself that the
case could hardly be proved anyway. But the mention of witnesses intrigued
her...and the seeming lack of a statement from the victim herself.

The printing was small and the paper
wafer-thin - probably conserving supplies for the war effort. She had to peer
closely to read it. Then she found what she was looking for the man's name.
Her heart began to thump as she smiled in triumph. The accused man hadn't died
in France - he was alive and well and staying half a mile away. 'Yes!' she
mouthed, carefully putting the file back in the drawer. It was the evidence she
needed.

Her visit to the Clearview Hotel
after lunch would be more interesting than she had anticipated. There was one
person she wanted to question very closely and preferably without Steve being
there to interfere. She knew that would be going against all the rules, but
sometimes you had to break rules to get on... to get noticed. Rachel was
determined that she would speak to one veteran of the D-day landings alone.

Chapter Ten

Of course, Bereton wasn't the only
village to be evacuated for the D-day landing rehearsals. Many other small
villages in the area met a similar fate. The church at Whitely sustained a
great deal of damage, having its entire west wall blown out by mortars. Now, thankfully,
this beautiful church has been restored to its former
glory.