Blood Axe (15 page)

34

Extending a hand,
the man greeted Ian with an easy smile. ‘Good morning, I'm Ralph Grey, head of operations here. How can I help?'

Ralph was tall and thin, and would have been good-looking if he hadn't been slightly cross-eyed. He led Ian along a narrow corridor, past several whiteboards and peg boards, to a small office with three pine desks and shelving, and a large window. It was bright and airy, though small.

‘Now,' Ralph said, ‘what's the problem?'

Ian explained that he wanted to question staff at the museum, following a suspicion that the weapon used in the recent spate of murders was a replica Viking axe.

‘The axe murders, you mean?'

Ian nodded, acknowledging the name the press had given to the case.

Ralph's eyes narrowed. ‘But it was a replica,' he repeated. There was no reason why a copy would be in any way connected to the museum. ‘Anyone could get hold of a replica,' he added, as though the implication might have been lost on Ian.

‘Indeed,' Ian agreed. ‘What I'd like to know is how many of these axes there are around, where they are made, and where they can be obtained.'

Ralph nodded slowly. They both knew the question was faintly absurd. ‘We have a description,' Ian added.

‘If it's specifically an axe you're interested in, you could talk to Ollie. He has a particular interest in the weapons here and probably knows more about them than anyone.'

Ralph picked up the phone and made a quick call. A few moments later, there was a tap at the door. It opened to admit a skinny young man whom Ralph introduced as Oliver. With straw-coloured hair and pale blue eyes, Oliver Hemmings looked younger than his twenty years. He explained diffidently that he had spent a year studying at the university in York. He had dropped out at the start of his second year, after which he had been lucky to find a job at Jorvik museum.

‘And here I am,' he added simply.

A shy smile played on his thin lips as he spoke, but the expression in his eyes remained sharp. Like Ralph, he had noticed no strange activity in the museum recently, and he wasn't aware of any problems in the shop. As far as he knew, the weapons cabinet always remained securely locked and no one had paid any unusual attention in it. He leaned forward and stared intensely as Ian described the rune on the bruise that had shown up on the second victim's head. Ian said nothing about the axe that had gone missing at the Viking Festival. For a moment Oliver was silent as Ian held up an image of the bruise on the side of Tim's head. Ian watched the young man closely. There was a brightness in his eyes and the tip of his tongue flickered in and out, wetting his lips as though he was nervous. Eventually he lowered his head, making his fair fringe flop forward over his eyes.

‘Algiz,' he said.

‘What?'

‘The symbol you just showed me.'

‘The sign on the bruise?'

‘Yes. It looks like algiz, the rune for protection.'

Ian wondered if it might be significant that Oliver recognised the particular symbol straight away.

‘You must know all the runes? That's pretty impressive.'

Oliver shook his head. His expression was difficult to read. ‘It's only another alphabet really,' he explained, ‘although each symbol represents something, not just a sound like our alphabet.'

‘So do you know them all?' Ian pressed him.

Oliver sighed softly. ‘I used to,' he admitted. ‘I was a bit of a geek in a way, I suppose. I still know all the major ones, but I'm a bit hazy on a few of them now.'

Ian didn't push the point. Apart from confirming what the owner of the missing axe had told Ian about the symbol on its blade, Oliver was not much help. He had no idea where a blade like that might have been obtained and claimed to know nothing about the theft of a similar weapon at the Viking Festival. When Ian expressed surprise, telling him the theft had been reported in the press, Oliver merely shrugged his shoulders.

‘Well, I never saw it.'

‘We're all sort of experts in one way or another here, but weapons and fighting aren't really my thing. What interests me is the way the people lived, what they wore and what they ate, things about their everyday lives. That's what I've been researching mainly. Of course I'm not really what you'd call an expert. I've just studied Viking society enough to talk about it to members of the public, and to be able to answer basic questions. It's part of our job, being able to tell visitors to the place about the exhibits and where they come from. That's what makes working here so interesting. I'm learning all the time. But weapons aren't really my thing.' He gave an apologetic grimace.

Ian didn't tell him that Ralph had referred to him as the weapons expert. The young man barely hesitated when Ian asked him where he had been on the two evenings when the murders had been carried out.

‘I don't know what I was doing that Sunday,' he said straight away, ‘I just can't remember.'

Oliver's alibi was inconclusive.

Sophie was next to be questioned. She was twenty-two. Recently graduated in archaeology at the University of York, like Oliver she had found a job there. Originally from London, she hadn't wanted to leave the area.

‘I'm settled here.'

‘Boyfriend?' Ian asked amiably.

Sophie bristled. ‘No.'

Ian studied her. With a face framed by pink hair which faded into blonde strands that hung to her shoulders, she looked like an art student.

‘My area is the volur,' she announced.

Ian grunted, pretending to know what she was talking about; something to do with the Vikings no doubt. If it wasn't weapons, he wasn't really interested.

‘Magic,' she explained.

‘Fascinating,' Ian fibbed. ‘You must know just about everything there is to know on the subject.'

The flattery worked to some extent.

‘We have to be able to answer questions from visitors,' Sophie explained, unbending slightly.

‘Tell me about the volur.'

Her face relaxed into a smile. She spoke as though to children, launching into what sounded like a well-rehearsed lecture.

‘The volur is the name given to women who practised magic. These women were very influential in Viking society. The people then had strong beliefs in magic, and almost every story that has come down to us includes an element of magic or the supernatural. These beliefs coloured everything. Although today people generally think that warriors were the only really important members of Viking society, these women were very powerful. The volur were sort of sorceresses, and were often buried with their metal staffs and amulets. That's how we know so much about them, because of the artefacts that have been discovered in their graves, some of them immensely valuable, and always buried with women. They believed the soul was like a thread which was sent out when people died – or sometimes while they were still alive – and the volur could retrieve people's souls by winding them up on their staffs. Basically everyone had a hamingia, or spirit, that was independent of the person who owned it, as well as having external spirit guardians.'

‘Like a guardian angel,' Ian remarked.

Carefully he moved the conversation round to the missing axe. Sophie didn't seem interested.

‘I don't have anything to do with the weapons,' she said firmly. ‘The volur are what interest me.'

Sophie readily supplied her alibi for the times of both murders. She had been with her flatmate on the Sunday evening and on her way home from work on the Wednesday.

‘Were you travelling alone?'

‘Well, I wasn't the only person on the bus that day, but I didn't get the names of the other passengers.'

Her attempted flippancy sat uneasily on her.

35

Jimmy Sutherland was
the next member of staff to be summoned. A cheerful man of around forty with boyish good looks, he greeted Ian with a grin. His role was to organise the team of curators who worked in the museum, answering questions from members of the public.

‘Well, that's an appropriate use for a Viking axe, wouldn't you say?' he responded, when Ian explained about the replica axe. ‘Better than being stuck in a glass case at any rate.'

‘Better in what way, exactly?'

Jimmy just winked. It proved difficult to get a straight answer out of him. He seemed to find everything amusing. Ian wondered if he was a bit simple. Even when Ian became quite aggressive, Jimmy didn't seem at all troubled. Despite his training in remaining detached, Ian was slightly disappointed to discover that Jimmy had not been in York the day Angela had been murdered. He said he had been away in London for a long weekend, visiting a friend, only returning to York by train on Monday morning, and going back to work on Tuesday. Ian believed him. His alibi was easy enough to confirm so there would be little point in his lying. All the same, Ian made a note to check out Jimmy's alibi. Warning him not to leave York, Ian let Jimmy go.

Apart from the operational staff upstairs who organised marketing and events, as well as the curators who answered questions from members of the public visiting the museum, there were a couple of receptionists, and two girls who served in the gift shop. Ian summoned the operational staff together, curious to observe their interaction. By contrast to Jimmy, Ralph was clearly dismayed by the use of a replica axe to kill people.

‘This could be bad publicity for us,' he said.

‘Might be a good thing. No publicity is bad publicity,' Jimmy responded. ‘These aren't just any artefacts we're talking about,' Ralph insisted earnestly. ‘Our artefacts date back over a thousand years. If they're mishandled or used disrespectfully, that's never a good thing. That's why we have to be so careful not to allow just anyone to handle them. They stay locked up where no one can touch them.'

‘It's only a replica,' Jimmy pointed out. ‘Not even a copy of one of ours. We don't have an axe with that rune carved on it, do we?'

Ralph shrugged. ‘It's impossible to say what many of our axe heads looked like originally.'

On the face of it, the staff at the Jorvik museum had nothing very useful to add to what Ian knew about the missing axe. Oliver had explained the significance of the rune carved on the blade, but Ian could have discovered that for himself by looking up runes on the internet. Even so, he left the museum with a faint sense of unease. He wished he had brought Ted with him. A second pair of eyes was always useful, and he couldn't help feeling he had missed something.

Back at the police station Ian sat at his desk trying to think, but none of the information he had gathered seemed to point to any clear conclusion. He wrote up his report and studied what the other officers had found out from the rest of the staff at Jorvik before he summoned Ted so they could discuss what they had discovered. Ian couldn't help feeling there was something odd about Oliver.

‘Well, it does seem suggestive that Ralph told you Oliver was a weapons expert, and Oliver denied it,' Ted agreed. ‘But expert is a very loose term.'

They agreed that the most obvious suspect wasn't necessarily the right one. There was no reason to suppose the killer had anything to do with Jorvik at all.

Just as Ian began to feel they were going round in circles George, the profiler, wandered into the office. He perched on the edge of Ian's desk and twisted his head round to look at him. With a slow smile he raised an eyebrow interrogatively. Ian just shrugged. With a nod, George spoke.

‘Maybe we know more than you think.' He paused. ‘Let's go over what you've discovered since we last spoke.'

Ian hesitated.

‘We're a bit suspicious of one of the guys who works at the Jorvik museum,' Ted said.

George swivelled round to glance up at Ted, who had stepped forward and was standing beside Ian's desk.

‘Why's that? Go on, tell me what you're thinking,' George invited the sergeant.

Ted glanced at Ian who nodded.

‘Interesting,' the profiler muttered when Ted had finished his summary of their findings. ‘But this is just an overview. What's your gut feeling, Ian? You mentioned a suspicion.'

‘We think Oliver Hemmings may be hiding something,' Ted interjected as Ian hesitated. ‘Ralph told us Oliver was an expert in weapons, but Oliver denied it. We thought that was significant. And he seemed very interested in the axe. We thought that might mean something, too.'

Ian felt a rush of sympathy for his young colleague who was so desperate to find some clarity in the confusion of an investigation which was, so far, going nowhere.

‘It may be significant that he was interested in telling you about the rune on the missing axe. It's often the case that people who have some interest in a case, for whatever reason, are keen to follow the investigation,' George said.

‘You mean he might be the murderer, and he wants to get involved with us to find out how much we know?'

George laughed. ‘I wouldn't have put it quite like that, but yes, it's certainly a possibility. How strong is his alibi for the times of the murders?'

‘We're following up alibis from everyone who works there,' Ian assured him, ‘although we're grasping at straws here. There's nothing to suggest anyone who works there had any connection to the murders. They don't have any similar axes there, and none have gone missing. We've been pursuing all the stall holders who were there for the past few years, but so far we haven't found anyone who was selling replicas with runes like the one on the axe head we're looking for. That ties in with Andrew's claim that the one he bought was the only one with that rune engraved on it. From the timing it seems likely that the killer's using the axe stolen from Andrew Hilton at the Festival in February, but even if that's not the case, we haven't yet made any headway tracing other similar axes.'

Stolen from Andrew Hilton, the axe had vanished, leaving a trail of death in its wake.