Later the same morning he went looking for John Wigfull and found him in a small office studying a computer screen. ‘Is this urgent?’ Wigfull said, his face with the big moustache rising above the screen like a surfacing walrus. ‘I’m at work on a press release.’
‘I didn’t think you were playing online poker,’ Diamond said. ‘Is it about the missing cavalier, by any chance.’
‘No, that went out yesterday.’
‘Any response?’
‘It’s early days. Peter, if you don’t mind, I’m in the middle of something. My time is precious.’
‘Mine is as precious as yours, old chum. I’m not here on a social call. How long is it since the re-enactment man dis -appeared?’
‘Rupert Hope? Over two weeks now.’ He frowned. ‘Why – have you heard something?’
‘It’s just a coincidence. I’m dealing with a buried skeleton found up at Lansdown. I thought he was a Civil War soldier – a real one – but I’m told the bones are modern.’
‘My man wouldn’t be bones already,’ Wigfull said. ‘Not in our climate.’
‘I worked that out for myself.’
‘So I don’t see why you’re bothering me. It can’t be Rupert Hope.’
‘This one is without a head.’
‘I wouldn’t attach too much importance to that. Ploughing of the land does it.’
‘Under a fallen oak tree? That ground hasn’t been ploughed in a thousand years.’
‘You think he was decapitated?’
‘You’re a mind-reader.’
‘Why? To hinder identification?’
‘Probably.’
‘Was he murdered, then?’
Diamond rolled his eyes. ‘I’m trying to keep the proverbial open mind.’
‘A headless corpse,’ Wigfull said, beginning at last to be interested. ‘It might make an item for the press.’
‘Not yet, old chum. We’re still digging. We may get more information. Meanwhile I’m interested in your missing cavalier. Be sure to let me know when he turns up.’
‘I doubt if there’s a connection.’
‘Even so.’
He let Wigfull reconnect with his screen.
Back at the dig, the crime scene team were on another break, flasks and newspapers out, when Diamond turned up. An inflatable tent the size of a small barn had been erected over the area of excavation. He took a look inside. Nothing seemed to have changed since he’d last seen it. The bones were still partially embedded in soil.
‘How did you spend the morning?’ he asked after emerging from the tent.
Duckett, the head honcho, looked up from the Daily Mail. ‘What?’
‘I said how did you spend the morning? To me it looks the same as it did last night.’
‘Skeletons do, on the whole,’ Duckett said, and got some grins from his team.
Diamond contained his annoyance. ‘I don’t know if this makes any difference at all to your rate of work, but we could be dealing with a recent murder here. I’ve got an expert coming out. A forensic anthropologist.’
‘We heard. That’s why we downed tools. He won’t want it disturbed any more than it has been already.’
This was probably true. Not often did Peter Diamond come off the worst in an exchange of opinions. He turned his back on them and gazed across the vast landscape as if something of much more interest was happening two miles away.
Actually the action was much closer. Ingeborg’s head and shoulders appeared over the brow of the hill. Beside her, at about the level of her bobbing breasts, was a man in a white zipper suit carrying a cardboard box almost as big as himself. ‘This is Dr Peake,’ Ingeborg told Diamond when she was close enough.
‘Lofty,’ the small man said in a tone suggesting he’d heard every conceivable play on his name and settled for this one. ‘Ingeborg kindly gave me a lift here. Let’s have a look at what I came for.’ He dropped the box, put on surgical gloves, dipped under the crime scene tape and entered the tent, followed by Diamond and Ingeborg. ‘Ah, beautifully presented. Full marks to the diggers. Give me a few minutes with the young lady.’
Diamond had got accustomed to men making a play for the attractive Ingeborg, and it didn’t amuse him any more. ‘You can have your few minutes with me. I’m the SIO here.’
Lofty Peake said, ‘I think we’re at cross purposes. I was speaking of the deceased.’
‘You said “young lady”.’
‘Look at the pelvis. Obviously female.’
Time for a rapid rethink. Diamond had convinced himself the victim was male ever since he’d linked the death to the Battle of Lansdown.
He turned to Ingeborg. ‘You’d think that dozy lot would have recognised a female skeleton.’
‘Maybe they did,’ she said.
‘And said nothing to me? That would be so unprofessional.’
‘I wouldn’t take it up with them, guv.’
‘I don’t intend to. I’m not giving them the satisfaction.’
Lofty Peake was on his knees beside the skeleton, his face so close to the bones that he could have been sniffing them. ‘Has she had her picture taken?’
‘The victim? Yes, repeatedly.’
‘Soil samples taken? A search made for trace evidence? I think we can lift her, then. I’ll find out more in the lab. First impressions suggest she was a young adult, average in height. I don’t suppose there’s much chance of finding the skull, but you’ll make the effort, won’t you?’
‘Do you think it’s hereabouts?’ Diamond asked.
‘Don’t ask me. Try a sniffer dog. They’re more likely to know than I am.’
‘It was a dog that found the femur in the first place.’
‘I know that. Its teeth marks were all over the surface. The chances are that she was killed elsewhere and the head removed to hinder identification and if they go to that trouble they’re not going to drop the head into the same grave as the body. But you have to search the area.’ He asked for his cardboard box and started the task of collecting the bones, lowering them onto layers of tissue paper. ‘It goes without saying that the forensic team will collect the soil samples,’ he said as he worked. ‘We might learn something.’
‘Fibres?’ Diamond said.
‘Hopefully. Clothing deteriorates pretty rapidly in damp, acid soil like this. Cotton won’t last longer than a year and a half. Silk and wool are gone in three years. Synthetic fibres such as acrylic may last longer. Leather is fairly durable. The micro-organisms win in the end.’
‘If you can estimate how long she’s been here, we’ll run a check of missing persons for the years in question.’
‘In the fullness of time, superintendent. A lot of factors come into it.’ He prepared to raise one of the large pelvic bones. ‘Do you see how we know she’s female? This area below the pubis has to be wider in females to accommodate the birth canal. The baby’s head must pass between these two bones.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Diamond said.
‘It’s very obvious.’ Lofty transferred the bones to his box and then turned back to the soil and lifted something that had dropped with a chunk of earth as he raised the pelvis. ‘Hey-ho.’ He held the thing up. Not bone, for sure, it was about six inches long. He gave it a shake to show how flexible it was.
About the length of an earth worm.
‘Proof positive that she isn’t ancient,’ Lofty said.
‘What is it?’
‘It could do with cleaning up and then you’ll know for sure. I think it’s a zip fastener.’
The two-year-olds cantered down to the start for the main race of the evening and Paloma was looking at the filly she’d backed at 17 to 2, called My Stylist. ‘Mine’s moving well,’ she said, holding the binoculars to her eyes.
‘You’ve done this before,’ Diamond said.
‘Mm?’
‘I said you’ve done this before. Are you sure these badges belong to your rich client?’
‘I don’t know about yours. It’s looking nervous.’