This Body of Death (60 page)

“I will.”

L
YNLEY TOOK THE FIRST OF THE PHONE CALLS ON HIS MOBILE
as he left Sheldon Pockworth Numismatics, heading for his car on his way to the British Museum. It was from Philip Hale. Initially, his message was positive. Yukio Matsumoto, he reported, was conscious, and Isabelle Ardery was interviewing him in the presence of his brother and sister. However, there was something more, and as Hale was the last of the detectives ever to raise a protest in the midst of an investigation, when he did so, Lynley knew the situation was serious. Ardery was ordering him to stay at the hospital when he could better be used elsewhere, he told Lynley. He’d tried to explain to her that guarding the suspect was something better left to constables so that he could return to more useful occupation, but she wouldn’t hear of it, he said. He was a team player as much as anyone, Tommy, but there came a time when someone had to protest. Obviously, Ardery was a micromanager and she was never going to trust her murder squad to take any initiative. She was—

“Philip,” Lynley cut in, “hang on. I can’t do anything about this. It’s just not on.”

“You can
talk
to her,” Hale replied. “If you’re showing her the ropes like she claimed you are, then show her that one. Can you see Webberly …or yourself …or even John Stewart, and God knows John’s obsessive enough … ? Come on, Tommy.”

“She’s got a lot on her plate.”

“You can’t tell me she won’t listen to you. I’ve seen how she …Oh hell.”

“Seen how she what?”

“She got you to come back to work. We all know that. There’s a reason for it, and likely it’s personal. So
use
the reason.”

“There’s no personal—”

“Tommy. For God’s sake. Don’t play at being blind when no one else is.”

Lynley didn’t reply for a moment. He considered what had passed between himself and Ardery: how things looked and what they were. He finally said he’d see what he could do although he reckoned it would be little enough.

He phoned the acting superintendent, but Ardery’s mobile went immediately to her voice message. He asked her to ring him, and he kept onward to his car. She
wasn’t
his responsibility, he thought. If she asked his advice, he could certainly give it. But the point was to let her sink or swim without his interference, no matter what anyone else wanted from him. In what other way could she show that she was up to the job?

He made his way over to Bloomsbury. The second call on his mobile came while he was stuck in traffic in the vicinity of Green Park station. This time it was Winston Nkata ringing him. Barb Havers, he said, in “best Barb fashion” was on her way to defying the superintendent’s instructions that she remain in London. She was, he went on, driving down to Hampshire. He had not been able to talk her out of it. “You know Barb” was how Winston put it.

“She’ll listen to you, man,” Nkata said. “Cos she bloody well i’n’t listening to me.”

“Christ,” Lynley muttered, “she’s a maddening woman. What’s she up to, then?”

“The weapon,” Nkata said. “She recognised it.”

“What d’you mean? She knows who it belongs to?”

“She knows what it is. So do I. We di’n’t see the picture of it till today. Di’n’t have a look at the china board before this morning. And
what
it is narrows the field to Hampshire.”

“It’s not like you to keep me in suspense, Winston.”

“Called a crook,” Nkata told him. “We saw ’em by the crate in Hampshire, when we talked to that bloke Ringo Heath.”

“The master thatcher.”

“Tha’s the bloke. Crooks’s what’s used to hold reeds in place when you’re putting them on a roof. Not exactly something we’d be used to seeing in London, eh, but in Hampshire? Any place they got thatched roofs and thatchers, you’re goin’ to see crooks.”

“Jossie,” Lynley said.

“Or Hastings. Cos these’re made by hand. Crooks, that is.”

“Hastings? Why?” Then Lynley remembered. “He trained as a blacksmith.”

“And blacksmiths’re the ones who make the crooks. Each one makes ’em different, see. They end up—”

“Like fingerprints,” Lynley concluded.

“Tha’s about it. Which’s why Barb’s heading down there. She said she’d ring Ardery first, but you know Barb. So I thought you might …you know. Barb’ll listen to you. Like I said, she wasn’t having anything off me.”

Lynley cursed beneath his breath. He rang off. Traffic began moving, so he continued on his way, determined to track down Havers via mobile as soon as he could. He hadn’t managed this when his mobile rang again. This time it was Ardery.

“Where’ve you got with the coin dealer?” she asked.

He briefed her, telling her he was on his way to the British Museum. She said, “Excellent. It’s a motive, isn’t it? And we’ve found no coin among her things, so someone took it off her at some point. We’re getting somewhere at last. Good.” She went on to tell him what Yukio Matsumoto had informed her: There had been two men in the vicinity of the chapel in Abney Park Cemetery, not just one. Indeed, there had been three, if they wanted to include Matsumoto himself. “We’re working with him on an e-fit. His solicitor showed up while I was talking to him and we had something of a set-to—God, that woman’s like a pit bull—but she’s on board for the next two hours. As long as the Met admits culpability in Yukio’s accident.”

Lynley drew in a sharp breath. “Isabelle, Hillier’s never going to go for that.”

“This,” Isabelle said, “is more important than Hillier.”

It would, Lynley thought, be a very snowy day in hell before David Hillier saw things that way. Before he could tell the acting superintendent as much, however, she had rung off. He sighed. Hale, Havers, Nkata, and Ardery. Where to begin? He chose the British Museum.

There at last, he tracked down a woman called Honor Robayo who had the powerful build of an Olympic swimmer and the handshake of a successful politician. She said frankly and with an appealing grin, “
Never
thought I’d be talking to a cop. Read masses of mysteries and detective novels, I do. Who d’you reckon you’re more like, then, Rebus or Morse?”

“I have a fatal proclivity for vintage vehicles,” Lynley admitted.

“Morse it is.” Robayo crossed her arms on her chest, high up, as if her biceps wouldn’t allow her arms to get closer to her body. “So. What c’n I do for you, then, Inspector Lynley?”

He told her why he’d come: to talk to the curator about a coin from the time of Antoninus Pius. This coin would be an aureus, he said.

“Got one you want to show me?” she asked.

“I was hoping for the opposite,” he replied. And could Ms. Robayo tell him what such a coin might be worth? “I’d heard between five hundred and a thousand pounds,” Lynley said. “Would you agree?”

“Let’s just have a quick look.”

She took him to her office where amid books, magazines, and documents on her desk, she also kept her computer. It was a small matter to access a site on which coins were sold and a smaller matter to find on this site an aureus from the time of Antoninus Pius offered for bidding on the open market. The amount being asked was given in dollars, three thousand, six hundred. More than Dugué had thought likely. Not a huge sum, but a sum to kill for? Possibly.

“Do coins like these need a provenance?” Lynley asked.

“Well, they’re not like art, are they? No one’s going to care who’s owned it in the past unless, I suppose, it was some Nazi who took it off a Jewish family. The real questions about it will circle round its authenticity and its material.”

“Meaning?”

She indicated the computer screen on which the aureus for sale was pictured. “It’s either an aureus or it’s not an aureus: It’s pure gold or not. And that’s not something that’d be tough to sort out. As to its age—is it really from the period of Antoninus Pius?—I
suppose
someone could fake one, but any coin expert would be able to spot that. Besides, there’s the question of why one would go to all the trouble of faking a coin like this. I mean, we’re not talking about faking a ‘newly discovered’ painting by Rembrandt or van Gogh. You c’n imagine what something like that would be worth if someone could pull the wool successfully. Tens of millions, eh? But a coin? One would have to ask if thirty-six hundred dollars makes it worth the effort.”

“Over time, however?”

“You mean, if someone had faked a lorry load of coins to sell in dribs and drabs? Possibly, I s’pose.”

“May I have a look at one?” Lynley asked. “Aside from on the computer screen, I mean. D’you have any here in the museum?”

They did indeed, Honor Robayo told him. If he’d follow her … ? They’d have to toddle over to the collection itself, but it wasn’t far and she expected Lynley would find it interesting.

She led him back through time and place in the museum—ancient Iran, Turkey, Mesopotamia—until they got to the Roman collection. Lynley had been here but not in years. He’d forgotten the extent of the treasure.

Mildenhall, Hoxne, Thetford. They were called the hoards because that was how they had each been found, as a hoard hidden through burial during the time of the Romans’ occupation of Britain. Things hadn’t always gone swimmingly for the Romans as they attempted to subdue the people whom they’d come to rule. Since those people hadn’t generally taken well to being vanquished, rebellions occurred. During these intermittent periods of revolt, Roman riches were concealed to keep them safe. Sometimes the owners of these riches were unable to return for them, so they remained buried for centuries: in sealed jars, in wooden cases lined with straw, in whatever was available at the time.

This had been the case for the Mildenhall, Hoxne, and Thetford Hoards, which comprised the main treasures that had been found. Buried for more than one thousand years, each had been unearthed during the twentieth century and they included everything from coins to vessels, from body ornaments to religious plaques.

There were minor treasure hoards in the collection as well, each representing a different area of Britain where the Romans had settled. The most recently discovered was the Hoxne Hoard, Lynley saw, which had been uncovered in Suffolk on county council land in 1992. The discoverer—a bloke called Eric Lawes—had miraculously left the treasure exactly where and as it lay and had phoned the authorities at once. Out they came to scoop up more than fifteen thousand gold and silver coins; silver tableware; and gold jewellery in the form of necklaces, bracelets, and rings. It was a sensational find. Its value, Lynley reckoned, was incalculable.

“Much to his credit,” Lynley murmured.

“Hmm?” Honor Robayo said.

“The fact that Mr. Lawes turned it in. The treasure and this gentleman who found it.”

“Well, of course,” she said. “But really, less to his credit than you might think.” She and Lynley were standing in front of one of the cases that contained the Hoxne Hoard, where a reconstruction of the chest in which the hoard had been buried was rendered in acrylic. She moved from this across the room to the immense silver platters and trays from the Mildenhall Hoard. She leaned against the case and said, “Remember, this bloke Eric Lawes was out there looking for metal objects anyway. And
as
that’s what he was doing in the first place, he likely would’ve known the law. ’Course the law’s been changed round a bit since this hoard was found, but at the time, a hoard like Hoxne would’ve become the property of the Crown.”

“Doesn’t that indicate he’d have had a motive to hang on to it?” Lynley asked.

She shrugged. “What’s he supposed to do with it? Especially when the law said a museum could purchase it from the Crown—at fair market value, mind you—and whoever found it would get that money as a reward. That’s some considerable dosh.”

“Ah,” Lynley said. “So someone would be motivated to hand it over, not to hang on to it.”

“Right.”

“And now?” He smiled, feeling rather foolish for the last question. He said, “Forgive me. I probably ought to know the law about this, as a policeman.”

“Bah,” was her reply. “I doubt you come across many cases of people unearthing treasures in your particular line of work. Anyway, the law’s not
much
changed. Finder has fourteen days to report the treasure—if he
knows
it’s a treasure—to the local coroner. He actually could be prosecuted if he doesn’t ring up the coroner, as a matter of fact. Local coroner—”

“Hang on,” Lynley said. “What d’you mean, if he
knows
it’s a treasure.”

“Well, that’s the thing about the 1996 law, you see. It defines what a treasure is. One coin, f’r instance, does not a treasure make, if you know what I mean. Two coins, however, and you’re on shaky ground if you don’t get on the phone and let the proper authorities know.”

“So that they can do what?” Lynley asked. “On the off chance that all you’ve found is two coins and not twenty thousand?”

“So that they can bring out an archaeological team and dig the hell out of your property, I expect,” Honor Robayo said. “Which, to be frank, most people don’t mind because they end up with fair market value for the treasure.”

“
If
a museum wants to buy it.”

“Right.”

“And if no one does? If the Crown claims it?”

“That’s another interesting bit about the change in law. The Crown can only put its mitts on treasures from the Duchy of Cornwall and the Duchy of Lancaster. As to the rest of the country … ? While it’s not exactly a case of finders keepers/losers weepers, the finder
will
end up with a reward when the treasure is finally sold, and if the treasure is anything like these”—with a nod at the cases of silver and gold and jewellery in room 49—“you can lay good odds on the reward being hefty.”

“So what you’re saying,” Lynley said, “is that the finder of something like this has absolutely no motivation for keeping the news to himself or to herself.”

“None at all. Of course, I s’pose he could hide it under his bed and bring it out at night and run his hands through it gleefully, for all that’s going to get him. Sort of a Silas Marner kind of thing, if you know what I mean. But at the end of the day, most people’d prefer the cash, I expect.”