The Borgia Ring (6 page)

Disher shrugged. ‘As I said, he kept himself to himself. I don’t think he had any friends or enemies.’

‘Okay. So tell me about the skeleton.’

He didn’t look surprised. ‘What do you wanna know?’

‘You found it, yes?’

‘Me and two others. Ricky Southall and Nudge … Norman … Norman West.’

‘Tony Ketteridge was there?’

‘I called him over straight away. Dunno why I bothered, though.’

Pendragon gave him a quizzical look. ‘Meaning?’

‘Nothin’.’

Pendragon took a sip of tea. Returning the cup to the
saucer, he placed his hands, palm down, to either side of it. The silence quickly became oppressive. ‘I’m sure you can do better than that,’ he said finally.

‘Yeah, sure, and get me P45. What d’ya take me for?’

‘This is a murder investigation, Mr Disher. Surely I don’t need to remind you again?’

‘I thought I wasn’t a suspect. Just routine questions, you said.’

Pendragon sighed and pushed back his chair. ‘Okay, you’re free to go, but if I find you’re withholding vital information, I’ll bring you in so fast you won’t know what hit you.’ He started to get up.

‘Okay, okay.’ Disher shook his head. ‘Can’t fucking win, can I?’

Pendragon stared at him, saying nothing.

‘We had a row.’

‘Who?’

‘Me and Ketteridge.’

‘Over the find?’

‘We’ve never been bosom buddies, but … well … I didn’t like his attitude after we dug up the bones.’

‘Which was?’

‘That we should get rid of them
ASAP
.’

Pendragon raised an eyebrow.

‘I know the skeleton was old. But, I dunno … it didn’t seem right somehow.’

‘You took a stand over it?’

‘He wouldn’t budge and I walked off.’

‘The architect was there, wasn’t he?’

Disher nodded. ‘Slimy bastard. He agreed with Ketteridge, of course. Big surprise.’

‘So what happened?’

‘According to Ricky and Nudge, Ketteridge bottled.’

‘And Karim volunteered to watch over things?’ Pendragon said quietly. ‘You noticed the ring too?’

‘Couldn’t bloody miss it. Big emerald, by the look of it. I think that made all the difference.’

‘What do you mean?’ Pendragon drained his cup, eyeing the builder over the rim.

‘Well, there were five of us there. Ketteridge would hardly want to bury the skeleton, ring and all. And he couldn’t take the ring off without looking distinctly dodgy, now could he?’

‘So why didn’t he report it?’

Disher gave another shrug. ‘Wanted to buy some time probably. Talk to the higher-ups, pass the buck … Wouldn’t you?’

Tim Middleton did indeed come across as a slimy bastard. Precious and self-important, he looked distinctly uncomfortable as he too declined the offer of tea and tried to get comfortable in the plastic seat across the table from the DCI.

Pendragon had done some research. Rainer and Partner were a small-to-middling local firm of architects. Frimley Way was one of their bigger projects: a block of six apartments, high-spec yuppy hutches for the noughties. Middleton was thirty-six, made a partner a year ago, unmarried, hailed from Leicestershire. He had graduated from Oxford Brookes and then worked for a large company in Harrow for three years before joining Max Rainer, who had been a friend of his late father.

‘Did you know the murdered man, Mr Middleton?’

‘Not personally,’ Middleton replied, crossing his legs and flicking away a speck of dust only he could see. ‘We’re deeply shocked and saddened.’

‘Is that the royal “we”?’ Pendragon asked, his expression blank.

Middleton smiled faintly. ‘We, Rainer and Partner, sent our condolences to the family.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘Sorry, Chief Inspector, but was there a particular line of questioning you had in mind?’

Pendragon took his time studying some papers on the table. He pulled a photograph of the skeleton from the pile and placed it in front of Middleton. ‘All your own work, I understand.’

‘Yes. The whole thing was quite bizarre.’

‘Particularly since the skeleton has since vanished.’

Middleton looked appropriately shocked.

Before he could recover, Pendragon said: ‘I understand you were all for getting rid of it … what with the job slipping behind schedule, and all.’

‘Now hold on.’ Middleton had uncrossed his legs and pulled his chair towards the table. He looked genuinely alarmed. ‘I had no idea …’

‘But you did support Mr Ketteridge’s suggestion that the skeleton should be dumped somewhere? The whole thing hushed up?’

‘No, I did not!’

‘Oh?’

Middleton glanced at the ceiling then straight at Pendragon. ‘It was actually my idea to leave a security guard there overnight. It was too late on a Friday to do much else.’

‘You didn’t think to call the police?’

‘The skeleton is … was … ancient. You could tell that straight away.’

‘So everyone keeps telling me. Makes no difference.’

Middleton sighed and held his hands up, shoulders raised. ‘It wasn’t my call, Chief Inspector. You know that.’

‘So tell me about the project. Are you indeed behind schedule?’

Middleton held Pendragon’s gaze. ‘We’re always behind schedule. The client can never have things done fast enough. It’s a given, Chief Inspector.’

‘And the client is always right.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Okay, Mr Middleton, thank you for your time.’ Pendragon was already getting up. Middleton looked surprised it was all over so quickly. But then, as the DCI pushed his chair under the table, he said: ‘Incidentally, Mr Middleton, can you account for your whereabouts between one and three o’clock this morning?’

Middleton leaned against the back of his chair, a smirk on his face. ‘Er … well, I was asleep.’

‘Alone? At home?’

‘Sadly, yes.’

‘Thank you,’ Pendragon said quietly. Pursing his lips, he nodded as if this information slotted neatly into some secret agenda.

Sergeant Turner was about to knock on the interview-room door when it swung open and he saw Pendragon leading Tim Middleton out.

‘Do you have a minute, sir?’

Pendragon nodded, escorted Middleton to the front desk and returned to the interview room. ‘Anything interesting?’ he asked as he closed the door behind him.

‘Not really,’ Turner replied. He slotted a DVD into a machine and stabbed at the play button then stood back beside the table. Pendragon resumed his seat.

The screen was black apart from a digital time display that started at 02.14.24. The seconds clicked forward and images
took shape. At 02.14.47 they caught a fleeting glimpse of a featureless shape moving behind the piles of earth. In the blink of an eye it was gone. ‘I’ve tried to enhance that,’ Turner said as the film moved on. ‘But it’s nothing more than a blob of grey. Someone was there, for sure, but the camera is poor quality and the image just pixellates like mad if I try to enlarge it or enhance it.’ Then, as he spoke, a blurred image appeared, a hunched figure in dark clothes and balaclava. A gloved hand smothered the lens and the screen turned to static.

‘Same on all four cameras,’ Turner said gloomily.

Pendragon was sitting with his legs crossed studying his interwoven fingers, perched on one raised knee. ‘Predictable, really,’ he said wearily, and stifled a yawn. ‘Okay, let’s open it up. Get on to Central Monitoring. There must be at least half a dozen cameras within a few hundred metres of that building site. They couldn’t all be vandalised. And if they have been, someone must have seen it being done, even at that time of the morning. By the way, anything from the search team?’

‘Got a call from Vickers just now. Zilch. They’re winding down for the day. Plan to start again first thing in the morning.’

Pendragon’s third meeting of the afternoon came as something of a relief; a fact-gathering exercise rather than a verbal sparring match with a suspect.

‘Professor Stokes, thank you for sparing the time on a weekend.’

‘Not at all. Pleased to help,’ Stokes replied. He was a tall, thin man, bald except for a tuft of grey hair to each side of his head. He had a long narrow nose and small dark eyes. Pendragon had learned from Google that Professor Geoffrey Stokes was fifty-six, had held a professorship at Grenoble before moving to Queen Mary College, and was considered one of the foremost authorities on the history of London.

Pendragon showed him the photographs of the skeleton, laying them out in a row on the table.

Stokes tugged at the spectacles dangling from a delicate chain round his neck and perched them on the bridge of his nose. He bent closer to study the photos. ‘Extraordinary! Your sergeant told me on the phone that these came from the construction site on Frimley Way.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I took the liberty of stopping by there on the way in. Your forensics people were about. A very nice woman showed me where the skeleton had lain.’

‘Collette Newman?’

‘Yes.’ Stokes looked up and adjusted his glasses. ‘How exactly may I help you, Chief Inspector?’

‘This skeleton was unearthed yesterday afternoon. It’s clearly very old. Far too old to identify. But we have reason to believe it is somehow linked to a recent murder. I’m not at liberty to go into detail at this time, but if there is anything you can tell us from these photographs we’d be extremely grateful.’

‘May I not see the skeleton itself?’

‘Unfortunately that’s not possible at the moment.’

Stokes shrugged. ‘Well, there’s only so much … We’d have to make some broad assumptions.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, most importantly, that the skeleton hasn’t been moved since it was first placed where it was found. Assuming that is the case, then I can hazard a guess at its age. The soil here is blue clay; what used to be called bungam. Very common in East London. Below this is a layer of peat, which would have been exposed during the Bronze Age. If our skeleton had been found in the peat, I would have dated it to around 2,000 BC, but in the bungam stratum, well … certainly less than a thousand years old.’

‘Can you be any more precise?’

‘I noticed a few things at the site. The skeleton was found in the mid-bungam which places it between four hundred and seven hundred years ago. I also spotted a few fragments of wall at the same depth. The stones are the type used to construct primitive drains. That narrows the timeline to the fifteenth or sixteenth century.’

‘Amazing. So, do you have any idea what could have been built on this spot? Someone’s home?’

‘No.’ Stokes smiled and shook his head, his eyes bright. ‘We have very good records of all the buildings in this part of London. I know this site well. It’s in my own backyard … almost literally.’ And he produced a crooked smile. ‘The house the builders have just demolished was Victorian, a rare one to miss any serious bomb damage during the Blitz. But, oddly enough, it wasn’t listed. Before that a much smaller Georgian house stood on the site. It was the first private residence there. Before that it was an inn, the Grey Traveller. In one form or another, it had stood there since the late-fifteenth century. That’s as far back as the records go for the area.’

‘So, it’s quite possible the tavern was there when our man died?’

‘It’s more than likely. Indeed, I would think the drain led from the tavern. Not many private houses were linked to drains in those days. An inn was more likely to have such a thing, a pipe that led from the building to a septic tank.’

Pendragon picked up the photos again and looked at the top one. He handed them to Stokes. ‘The ring,’ he said. ‘What do you make of that?’

Stokes lifted the top picture close to his face. ‘It’s difficult to see clearly …’

‘Here.’ Pendragon came round the desk and handed the professor a magnifying glass.

‘It’s ancient. Gold, obviously, and with a large jewel, maybe an emerald. I’d have to do some close analysis. We have some useful computer-enhancement software in college.’

‘They’re yours,’ Pendragon said as he stood up. ‘And, thank you, Professor.’

France, February 1589

When I bring to mind the journey from the Venerable English College in Rome to the city of Paris, the overriding memory is of my bones being chilled to the very marrow, for it was the coldest winter anyone could remember. Sebastian Mountjoy, three servants and I took ship at Civitavecchia, a short ride from the Vatican, making Genoa through high swells and two terrible storms four days later.

When we reached good solid land, it felt like God’s blessing on us. I had been ravaged by seasickness almost before we left port. But although we had exchanged water for land, there was no respite from the cold. The southern part of France is renowned for its mild winters and comforting coastal breezes, but the exceptionally harsh weather had spread far. Indeed, we witnessed snow in the town of Nice.

Of course, the weather worsened as we travelled north, so that by early-February, when our party reached Lyon, we were unable to make any headway at all. Luckily, Sebastian found us comfortable rooms in a small guest house close to the city wall. The town was packed with other stranded travellers, some of whom were fretting about the enforced delay, while others simply accepted it as God’s will. Sebastian and I were definitely in the latter category and those three days and nights we were forced to stay put in the good town of Lyon proved a welcome diversion. Our mission was of
the utmost seriousness and we knew we were walking into danger, but these facts only added to our desire to take advantage of the respite. I recall with fondness playing dominoes before a roaring fire, eating good venison and sampling the local hops. I’m sorry to say that, in truth, these things constitute the last good memories I can now draw upon.

On the fourth morning after our arrival in Lyon, we managed to return to the road heading north, but it was very hard going and slow. Fourteen freezing days and nights we spent on that road. The landscape had changed and was rarely more than a white carpet, punctured occasionally by the outline of a church spire or a city wall. Sometimes a purple rope of smoke ascending to the chilled heavens broke the monotony.

It was close to dusk on the eighteenth day of February when we finally reached Créteil. An early and unexpected thaw had turned the snow to slush. For a month Paris and all the towns around it had been entombed in snow. Hundreds had died. Theirs had been cold deaths, so very different from the reaper’s tally during summer when plague-ravaged bodies bobbed in the Seine. With the thaw came water and mud, whole streets where the sludge ran knee-deep.

From a high point on the road, just outside Créteil, and sitting straight in the saddle, I could just make out the outline of Paris, solemnly shrouded in brown. My back ached and my limbs were sore. I was filthy, hungry and exhausted. I also felt an undeniable sense of disappointment, for this view of Europe’s largest, grandest city was nothing like the one I had hoped for. Paris looked like an amorphous thing, decrepit, the colour of ditchwater.

‘Not far now, my friend,’ Sebastian said from his own mount to my left.

‘And not a moment too soon,’ I replied, digging my heels into my horse’s sides and flicking the reins to urge on
the exhausted beast through the mud weighing down her tired legs.

Le Lapin Noir was popular: warm and dark. The servants stabled the horses and had them fed and I followed Sebastian into the main room of the inn. It was a wide, low-ceilinged room, with just one window looking out on to the dark road. Most of the locals were gathered around the huge fireplace in the far wall. The air was thick with smoke from the damp wood and the whole place stank of embers and sweat. The regulars eyed us suspiciously as we entered. A young boy led us to a back room which we had to ourselves. There, a meaner fire burned in the grate, but it threw out a good heat. A rough wooden table and a pair of chairs took up most of the floor space, and we threw ourselves into the chairs.

I could see the inn-keeper in the main room but he was busy with his regular customers. It was only as a servant brought over our food that I caught the inn-keeper’s eye. He came over to us and studied me warily.

‘Good landlord,’ I said as cheerily as I could manage, ‘we are in search of a gentleman named Gappair. Do you know if he is here this evening?’

The man had a weather-beaten face and no more than two teeth in his head. ‘No idea, sir,’ he lisped. ‘Never ’eard of him.’ And without another word he walked off, back to the hubbub of the main room. I glanced at Sebastian who looked as lost as I felt.

We concentrated on our food for a while. We were famished. Sebastian was first to finish and rose from the table to relieve himself. I was left alone to study the figures in the other room. Sebastian was still out in the back yard when there was a commotion at the door to the inn. A figure in a black cape, his face shrouded from view, was being turned away by the inn-keeper. Two of the publican’s friends, big,
burly farmers by the look of them, came up behind the inn-keeper, ready with their support. In a moment, the cloaked man was gone and the room had settled down again. I turned back to the table and saw a folded piece of paper next to my empty bowl.

I was opening it when Sebastian returned. I read it as he lowered himself into his chair. It said: ‘Chapelle Ste-Jeanne-d’Arc, Rue Montmartre. Midnight.’

We couldn’t take our horses out again so soon after such a long journey, so we hired a couple of rather elderly mares from the inn-keeper. Thanks to the mud and the intense dark of a moonless night it took almost three hours for us to travel the ten miles from the inn to the Chapelle Ste-Jeanne-d’Arc. Things became a little easier as we reached the centre of Paris where the streets were cleared of old snow and drained of the worst of the slush. And our one great advantage was that Sebastian was familiar with the city from his younger days when he had spent a year studying at the Abbey of Montmartre.

He told me that, although still beautiful, the Chapelle Ste-Jeanne-d’Arc was now a mere shadow of its former glory. Half a century earlier, in the days of Francis I, it had been one of the city’s finest chapels, a favourite of the Royal Family. Now the most significant thing about it, he said, was its large cemetery, still a popular final resting place for the great and the good of Paris. Sebastian had walked through the cemetery on more than one occasion in his younger days and was quick to find the main path that led through the sacred ground, threading a route between massive black slabs of marble, stone angels and crosses taller than a man. We had brought only a single lantern with us and we used it sparingly. A little light filtered through from buildings on Rue Montmartre, but I was entirely in Sebastian’s hands.

The solemn grey outline of the chapel took me by surprise as it emerged suddenly from the gloom. We dismounted and tethered the horses close to the door. Sebastian relit the lantern and led the way. The ground was soft underfoot, mud covering our boots and splashing our calves.

We came to the chapel’s great wooden door. It was unlocked, but the hinges were rusted and worn and it took both of us to push it inwards, the old hinges complaining as it went.

Inside, it felt unnaturally cold, far more so than the windswept graveyard. Shadows flickered over the walls; there were brief flashes of colour as moonlight seeped softly through the stained glass in the clerestory windows. It was absolutely silent except for the sound of our boots, loud on the flagstone floor. Then we heard a faint click, followed by a tap. We stood still in the semi-darkness, straining to hear. The sound stopped. We walked slowly up the nave. It was so dark we could see only a few feet to either side of us. The sides of the chapel remained in shadow. A few steps on and the pulpit reared out of the gloom, an ugly stone block. Behind it stood a huge carved cross, a pale Christ hanging bloodied upon it.

The sound came again. A tap, then another. It was growing louder, coming closer. Sebastian turned with the lantern and we each caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure standing a few feet before us, a flash of long, white hair, piercing black eyes in a sallow face.

‘Welcome,’ the figure said in a rasping voice.

Sebastian was a step ahead of me. I saw him crumple as he was struck by a heavy object that swung out from the darkness. Stunned, I moved to catch my friend as he fell. But as I bent forward, I felt a rush of air, the sound of a heavy object whistling past my ear, and then a terrible pain shot through the side of my head. The face of an old man, his
almost translucent hair flying in front of his eyes, flashed before me. Then the ground reared up, twisting and blurring before me, as my legs gave way and blackness enveloped me.