Time Enough To Die (12 page)

"Surely there are a lot of artifacts still at the fort."

"Oh yes. Some very interesting ones, too. But that particular set of artifacts, the statuary, had not only been made at approximately the same time and place, it had been buried together for almost two millennia, so it would all feel the same...."

The corner of Gareth's mouth tucked itself in skeptically.

"If I blindfolded you,” Matilda tried to explain, “and handed you two handmade wool Aran sweaters and two factory-made acrylic sweaters, you'd be able to classify them by touch, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose so. Is that what it's like, then?"

"It's about as much like that as water is like Guinness Stout."

Laughing, Gareth opened the briefcase.

"As for catching the looters who took the statuary, and keeping any more looters from taking anything,” Matilda went on, “I hope I'll be able to keep one jump ahead of them. I wouldn't be surprised if Reynolds is involved."

"Clapper implied as much. Perhaps Reynolds and Linda were working together to begin with, and she double-crossed him. Now Reynolds can't admit he knows for certain the statuary came from Cornovium, because he'd be admitting he took it himself."

"Many of our leads come from one looter turning in another."

Gareth spread several file folders across the bed, spilling papers and photos. “I told you what Clapper said about the travelers."

"Devil-worshipping druggies feeding at the public trough? Or was that Reynolds's line?"

"They agree, I expect. Here are the police reports and transcripts of the interviews, if you're sure you want to see them. A murder case is hardly an art fraud case.” Gareth sat back against the headboard.

"It is when the victim is apparently involved in the illegal antiquities trade.” Matilda fished her reading glasses out of her shoulder bag, moved to the bed, and began to sift through the pile.

The pictures made in the morgue at Manchester were well-lighted and clearly focused. On the stainless steel tray Linda's body seemed like a cool and clinical anatomical display, nothing human. It was the photos taken at Durslow that captured the horror of her murder. Her body had lain crumpled on the leaf-strewn stone, one hand outstretched, her head twisted back at an unthinkable angle, her face turned to the indifferent sky. Dead faces had no expression, but still Matilda thought that Linda had died surprised.

She glanced through the forensic reports. The right parietal of Linda's skull had been fractured in a blunt force trauma. Her esophagus, trachea, and associated tissue had been cut with several strokes of a small but very sharp knife. Only her cervical vertebrae still connected her head to her body. Blood had soaked the back of her clothing and pooled on the stone itself. A faint stain on the basin of the spring meant that the murderer had washed his hands there. He must have gotten blood on his clothing as well. His shoes had left no prints.

"No murder weapon,” Matilda said.

"The murderer took it away with him,” replied Gareth. “We can say ‘him', if you like."

"Just to simplify the discussion, yes, let's."

"She was bashed from behind with a rock. There were certainly enough to hand, although the investigators couldn't find any that matched the injury. He had to bash her head in first, mind you. His knife was too small to have done much damage with the first thrust. She would have been able to fight back. But there were no parry cuts to her hands and arms. There were no bruises other than the natural lividity of the body."

Matilda put down the photos. Gareth was looking past the walls of the room, visualizing the murder scene. He'd been here three days and hadn't yet solved the crime. He hadn't even found any clues, other than the receipt from the antiquities shop in Manchester. If he could have produced a solution by sheer brain power, like calculating pi to the hundredth place, he would already have the criminal behind bars.

"And she lay there for two days until she was found,” Matilda picked up another printed page. “Very cold weather, that was helpful from the forensics standpoint.... “She looked up. “Gareth, her body was found February third. She was killed on February first. February first is Imbolc, one of the old Celtic quarter days. Now February second is St. Brigit's day, one of those saints who used to be a god."

He cocked his brows at her. “You think that's important?"

"It might be. So might the fact that she was killed at Durslow, an ancient sacred site."

"The murderer was familiar with the area, knew the ledge was an isolated place."

"Great stretches of countryside are isolated, especially in the Peak District east of here."

"Are we going back to the devil-worshipping nutters, then, with Linda as some sort of sacrifice?"

Matilda shook her head. “Rumors of evil conspiracies are no more than public paranoia. Satanists only prowl the streets looking for innocent victims in TV movies-of-the week, not in real life. One of the few genuine cases I've ever heard of was on the Mexican border several years ago. The leader of that cult was playing terrible games to impress his followers. You see the same thing happen in the odd Christian cult, unfortunately. It's a variety of mental pollution."

"Is there such a thing as authentic ritual?"

"Not to mention real magic? Yes, there is. In the world's great religions you can trace an unbroken ceremonial path back for thousands of years. For modern pagan ritual, though—the varieties are not at all synonymous—the best you can do is combine educated guesses with a lot of imagination. Which is why it probably doesn't matter that the ancient Celts would occasionally sacrifice a human being not on Imbolc but on Beltane, May first—the progenitor of Corcester's happy little festival."

"Would a group of nutters care about Imbolc or Beltane? They can make up the rules as they go along, just like the yobs in Mexico."

"Exactly. That's our variable in the case. If there's some kind of relationship between Linda's death and the rumors of devil-worship, there might be a relationship between the rumors and the stolen antiquities."

"That's a bit round the houses,” protested Gareth.

Matilda sighed. “The Maypole and the horn dances and the hobby horses that look like children's games on the poster downstairs once had all the gravity, say, of Holy Communion to us."

"I'm an atheist,” Gareth said.

"Even so, you're not likely to trash out a church, are you?"

"No. What's your point?"

"That just because you don't believe in something yourself doesn't mean that it doesn't matter. Whether something is real or not doesn't matter, as long as a person believes it's real and acts on his beliefs."

"That's as may be, but I'll carry on believing in fakes and phonies, myself."

"Fine,” Matilda said with a smile.

Gareth shifted his weight. The bedsprings creaked and the piles of paper slipped sideways. Voices rose and fell in the hall outside. A phone rang. A door slammed. “The case might be a perfectly simple one,” he said. “Linda was a confederate of Reynolds, he found out she was planning to grass on him, so he killed her. I'll have a go at Della, see if I can break his alibi."

"Be careful. She was very nervous talking to you tonight, and yet there was something—well—hungry there as well. She's a desperate woman."

"Super,” he groaned.

Matilda leafed through the transcripts. The police had interviewed Adrian and Della Reynolds and the stable man Jimmy. They had talked to various travelers who identified themselves only as Bob, Sanjay, Shirl, Nick, Gordon and DeDe—none of whom had ever heard of Linda Burkett. The truck driver boyfriend had an alibi. Celia Dunning had been shocked at the entire distasteful business. Linda's relatives had been stunned into incoherence.

At last Matilda bundled everything into a pile. “Worse than a crossword puzzle, isn't it? You don't know what is a clue and what isn't. All you know is that you don't have all the clues."

"Well I won't say which one of us hasn't a clue,” Gareth responded, but he grinned as he spoke.

Matilda whacked his thigh with a sheaf of papers. “I'll talk to Ms. Dunning in Manchester."

"That leaves me to the travelers and to Della. In the future one or the other of us should always be here, don't you think?"

"Yes.” Matilda tucked her glasses away, stood and stretched. “Good night. Don't dream of gods, demons, and forensics."

"I rarely dream.” Gareth got up and opened the door for her. “Be sure to ask Dunning about the stolen statuary as well."

Matilda looked at him pityingly.

He smiled. “Good night then,” he said, and closed the door.

By early Wednesday afternoon, Matilda realized she wasn't going to get away that day. The spades and trowels of the students were turning up enough bits of pottery, metal, and stone to keep both her and Howard busy. Jennifer enlisted Courtney and Ashley to make preliminary drawings. Courtney dashed off a pile of indecipherable sketches. Ashley labored with her tongue clamped between her lips and after an hour's work produced one smudged drawing of a six-sided die.

"I think that one's about ready for the Tate Gallery,” Matilda told her.

Ashley laughed, easing the lines of concentration in her face.

Caterina was moving right along with the pieces of inscription. Her knowing some Latin helped, of course, as Sweeney told Reynolds during the owner's tour of inspection. “She's quite a bright little thing for a girl,” he went on, “but at the limit of her competence, I'm afraid."

Matilda rolled her eyes upward, hoping Caterina's Latin was better than her English. “This is treasure, yes?” the girl asked.
"Il tresoro magnifico."

"Better than gold,” Matilda told her, and added with a glance at Reynolds, “Although some parties wouldn't think so."

By quitting time the assembled letters read
M Cornel Felix
and
deo invicto mytrae.
So Marcus had dedicated a Mithraeum, Matilda thought. That fit in with the bits of a tall votive lamp Gareth had unearthed yesterday. She climbed down the collapsed sides of the Miller trench, avoiding projecting rounds of column drum, to see what he'd found today.

Gareth stood, dirty hands on dirty hips, surveying his work. Foundations emerged from the damp soil at his feet, the apsidal end of an apparently narrow building not much larger than a camper-trailer.

Matilda touched the damp stone of the apse. Men's voices echoed in the rock. Torches flickered in her mind's eye. She heard the bellowing of a bull and smelled the sharp coppery odor of blood. A firm believer in coincidences, she nodded and said, “This is the Mithraeum. It was an underground chamber in the first century, that's why it's so deep now. Any fragments of a statue of a young man killing a bull?"

"Not yet.” Gareth glanced over his shoulder. Ashley was the person closest to them, and she was several paces away at the top of the trench. Even so he lowered his voice. “Scientific inquiry is all to the good, and this is quite interesting and all, but I don't feel as though I'm doing my job mucking about here."

"Keep at it until you uncover something of value to use as bait for the looters."

"Treasure trove? Here?"

"Those column drums in the side of the trench suggest that this chamber was beside and below the main temple. The Romans always kept their payroll money in a cellar below the headquarters. Maybe they kept.... “She stopped, suddenly aware that her voice was speaking without the guidance of conscious thought. “Sorry. I just went into Delphic oracle mode. Suffice to say there's something here."

"And I'll know it when I find it, eh?” Gareth asked.

"Oh yes, you will."

Ashley leaned over the lip of the gully. “Everybody's going back to the hotel, and Dr. Sweeney says it's his shout for the drinks. Are you coming?"

Gareth scrambled wordlessly upward, returned Ashley's smile, and walked off. Matilda closed her mind to the long dead voices, and she, too, climbed back into the twentieth century.

Centuries of human touch had shaped the land with fields, hedgerows, and thickets of trees. Buildings nestled in folds of green. Roads stitched fences and streams into one multi-textured garment. Matilda stood beside her car and threw her senses onto the wind. She drifted with the clouds through a blue morning sky, flirted with daffodils and budding leaves, rode the wings of sea gulls that swooped down upon a tractor and plow. Her toes wiggled in the cool earth turned by the blade and her nostrils filled with its scent.

At last she reclaimed her perceptions. A chilly wind ruffled her hair. The tractor was so far away she could barely hear the noise of its engine. The gulls were wheeling white shapes behind it.

Matilda climbed back into the car, turned toward Manchester, and let herself think about the case.

There was only the one case, she was sure of that. It was like two skeins of yarn tangled together. When she pulled on a red thread of one, it tightened around a golden thread of the other. Dark strands ran through both, the ledge at Durslow and the severed hand from Shadow Moss, rumors of ancient gods and the passions of long-dead Romans. A knot in those threads had brought Linda Burkett to her death. A knot tied by Adrian Reynolds, perhaps, or by one or more travelers, or even by guileless townspeople such as Clapper, whose bar was information central.

All too soon the romantic country road fed into the maze of highway exchanges around Manchester, going from a man-molded landscape to a man-dominated one. Driving on the left made the interchanges mirror-images of the ones back home. Matilda concentrated on each turn until she arrived at the University, where she found and introduced herself to Ted Ionescu, one of Howard Sweeney's acolytes.

"Ah yes,” he said, ejecting each word through prominent front teeth. “The American lady professor."

"Real professors being British and male?” Matilda inquired.

Ionescu's glasses glinted blankly. “Sorry?"

"I'd like to see the body and the hand from Shadow Moss, please."

"Oh-er.... “He opened and shut his mouth. “Very good. This way."

He was just the kind of assistant Howard would choose, Matilda thought, intelligent enough to make his boss look good, nervous enough to be easily intimidated, with too little personality to be competition. She followed Ionescu into a warren of offices and stopped dead beside a display case.