Burial Mound Read online

  Burial Mound

  Phillip Strang

  BOOKS BY PHILLIP STRANG

  DCI Isaac Cook Series

  MURDER IS A TRICKY BUSINESS

  MURDER HOUSE

  MURDER IS ONLY A NUMBER

  MURDER IN LITTLE VENICE

  MURDER IS THE ONLY OPTION

  MURDER IN NOTTING HILL

  MURDER IN ROOM 346

  MURDER OF A SILENT MAN

  MURDER HAS NO GUILT

  MURDER IN HYDE PARK

  MURDER WITHOUT REASON

  DI Keith Tremayne Series

  DEATH UNHOLY

  DEATH AND THE ASSASSIN’S BLADE

  DEATH AND THE LUCKY MAN

  DEATH AT COOMBE FARM

  DEATH BY A DEAD MAN’S HAND

  DEATH IN THE VILLAGE

  BURIAL MOUND

  Steve Case Series

  HOSTAGE OF ISLAM

  THE HABERMAN VIRUS

  PRELUDE TO WAR

  Standalone Books

  MALIKA’S REVENGE

  Copyright Page

  Copyright © 2019 Phillip Strang

  Cover Design by Phillip Strang

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine, or journal.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This work is registered with the UK Copyright Service.

  Author’s Website: http://www.phillipstrang.com

  Dedication

  For Elli and Tais, who both had the perseverance to make me sit down and write.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 1

  Archaeology was never of much interest to Detective Inspector Keith Tremayne, a man whose idea of a fun weekend was not ferreting around on his hands and knees with a small trowel and a soft brush.

  Not that Clare Yarwood, his sergeant, saw it that way. She revelled in the history of Salisbury and the area – its acknowledged pinnacle for the hordes of tourists, Stonehenge. However, the thought of the monument, built high on Salisbury Plain by Neolithic ancestors five thousand years previously, brought out negative emotions in her, as it was the site of a murder earlier in her career.

  Theirs was an unlikely partnership, most would agree: the recalcitrant detective inspector, closing in on retirement age, a man who loved nothing more than a pint of beer and a cigarette, the chance to plan his next bet on an invariably losing horse, and his thirty-four-year-old female sergeant. Chalk and cheese in personalities, but their relative strengths played off each other.

  ‘What is it with these people?’ Tremayne said as he prowled around the burial mound.

  ‘What people?’ Yarwood said. It was a cold morning, a chill wind blowing off the hills at their backs. She was wrapped up in a coat with a scarf around her neck.

  ‘Digging around in the dirt, disturbing the long dead.’

  ‘History. The chance to find out where you came from, who were your ancestors.’

  ‘And why would I want to know that? You get one chance at life, make the best of it. And if someone who lived in the distant past had eaten fish for breakfast, what does that do for you and me?’

  ‘The fount of knowledge, the chance to learn, to improve our knowledge of the human condition.’

  ‘Over here,’ a voice called from across the field.

  The two police officers walked over to where an anoraked, ponytailed man stood. Tremayne felt like commenting on how a man in his fifties, bald on top, could look so stupid, but he did not. Even though he was the inspector and Yarwood the sergeant, she’d still berate him for too many negative comments.

  ‘You’ve had your ration for today,’ she would say.

  Clare, warm enough in appropriate clothing, had no reason to complain about the cold; Tremayne did, having chosen to arrive at the exposed site wearing his suit and black leather shoes; definitely not the clothes to be standing around in an open field looking over at an archaeological dig.

  ‘It was Bob that found it,’ Gerard Horsley, the ponytailed man, said.

  ‘Are you certain about this?’ Tremayne said. Clare could see him shivering, moving his feet up and down, attempting to maintain circulation. She’d have a chat with Jean, his wife, later on, to make sure that he received the necessary care when he finally returned home later that day.

  It was the two of them, Tremayne’s sergeant and his wife, who cared about him. One had become his partner at Bemerton Road Police Station seven years previously; the other, Jean, had met the inspector when they were both young. True love it had been, but a police officer’s vocation didn’t make for a harmonious home life and after several years of wedded bliss – Tremayne’s estimation of the marriage – Jean had left, taking the dog with her, just after the animal had learnt to make itself useful and fetch his slippers when he walked in the door.

  Both Tremayne and Jean were now older and wiser, although Jean would debate the latter description being ascribed to Tremayne: the man was still susceptible to too many pints of beer, one too many cigarettes of a day, and he had had one scare that had put him in the hospital due to his late hours at work, the boozy pub lunches. They had reunited after twenty-one years. Tremayne had never remarried, although Jean had married another, had two children and then been widowed. After a while, and without the stress of the demands of their earlier lives, they had moved in together again. They had recently sealed their relationship by marrying again, Jean’s elder son giving her away, the other son acting as best man.

  ‘You said a body on the phone,’ Clare reminded Horsley.

  ‘There are two. It’s not often you find anything other than a few implements, the occasional piece of jewellery. You can begin to understand how excited we were. I take it you’ve heard of Sutton Hoo?’

  ‘Not me,’ Tremayne replied. Clare was not surprised by his response.

  ‘We learnt about it at school,’ she said.

  ‘It was 1939, that’s when they opened Mound 1 and discovered the form of a ship. The timbers had rotted away, but it had left an impression, the iron rivets still in their places. This mound’s a lot older, at least three and a half thousand years, probably four.’

  ‘A cold case if they’ve been murdered,’ Tremayne said sarcastically. ‘I doubt if there’s much point us being here, is there?’

  ‘That’s what we thought, but they didn’t wear watches back in the Bronze Age.’

  Tremayne had seen burial mounds before; there were hundreds throughout the area. Most had either been looted soon after the deceased had been buried in there with their valuables or else they had been deemed of little value and left alone. Or, as in the case of Gerard Horsley and his tea
m, they were opened up, offering a chance to search for history and knowledge of how the past inhabitants of the area lived; poorly Tremayne would have said, judging by the reconstructed Bronze Age village near to Stonehenge.

  To Tremayne, five thousand or one thousand, even one hundred made little difference. The present was for living, not for dwelling in the past.

  ‘The body, how did you find it?’ Clare asked. She was intrigued by the work at the site, undisturbed for millennia, until Horsley and two of his associates arrived.

  ‘Ground-penetrating radar, the same manufacturer that the police use. For amateur use, not the heavy-duty equipment that the police have. It showed us the easiest way in, the direction that would minimise the damage to the site. We’re not cloth-capped diehards steeped in the past. When there’s a better way, we’ll take it. Unfortunately, too often it’s slow and tedious work.’

  ‘If there’s a recent body in there, then how did it get there?’

  ‘That’s where you come in, sorry to say. We don’t know, and we’re baffled, unless the man’s a time traveller,’ Horsley said, a smile on his face. Clare thought that it transformed the man from eccentric to normal; Tremayne thought it was weird.

  ‘We deal in hard facts, not make-believe,’ Tremayne said.

  ‘Sorry, a poor attempt at humour. Whoever the body is, it’s been put there for a reason.’

  ‘You mentioned two bodies,’ Clare reminded Horsley.

  ‘The other one’s someone of importance, over four thousand years old, can you believe it? The burial site is not in good condition, and at first we thought it was just the one body.’

  ‘Any weapons?’ Clare asked.

  ‘We’ve not got that far yet. We could see the original skeleton, or what was left of it. Unfortunately, the badgers have been in there. Some might see them as furry country wildlife, but to us they’re a damn nuisance.’

  ‘The second body?’ Tremayne asked, more anxious to bring in the team than to debate the historical value of what had been discovered.

  ‘As we were coming out, backwards as it’s tight in there, a part of the shaft that we had constructed collapsed and an arm came out, almost hit me in the face.’

  ‘And you believe it not the same period as this warrior?’

  ‘Wearing a watch?’ Horsley replied indignantly.

  ‘Yarwood, you know what to do,’ Tremayne said, looking over at his sergeant.

  ***

  Tremayne would have preferred somewhere cleaner, less muddy, and definitely somewhere more agreeable than a field that was soggy underfoot. Clare had donned coveralls to get a closer look of the more recent of the two bodies; Tremayne had not. As far as he was concerned, there was a perfectly good team of crime scene investigators who could do that, reporting back to him what they found.

  It was an unusual case; he’d have to admit. Gerard Horsley, well-respected in Salisbury, had a reputation as an eccentric, a man who spent his time at archaeological digs or making presentations to schools around the area on the heritage that the children were part of. Not that many were interested, Tremayne was sure of that. As part of his community responsibility, he had been asked to make the occasional speech about modern policing, and how the general public could assist, and if it was for the pre-teens, it included the inevitable warning about people, men usually, who attempted to cajole them into their cars, and where to phone in an emergency. Not that any of them would have any trouble with phoning, as all the children carried mobile phones, not like in his day.

  He still remembered the first day a phone had appeared in his parents’ house, and the old-style phone boxes, money in the slot, press button A to connect, button B to reclaim left-over coins. He had gained a few extra pence by pressing the reclaim button every time he passed a phone box. But now they were gone, as were the days of his childhood when he would pedal his bike wherever he wanted to go, not worrying about cars and trucks, and definitely not wearing a helmet. Jean, now his wife again, had tried to get him back on a bike, more for his health than anything else, but he had resisted.

  ‘I’d look a complete fool in those Lycra outfits they wear, and I’m not going to wear one of those helmets. It’s only bike riding, I’m not entering the Tour de France.’

  Jean had given up persuading him to ride, but she had instigated a walk around the block every other day, rain or shine, murder or no murder. She didn’t always succeed, and as Clare, his sergeant, as well as being Jean’s friend, knew, Tremayne would be using the latest murder as a way out of the every-other-day walk.

  Murder had not been confirmed yet, but the watch that Clare had seen was analogue and looked to be old.

  The question according to her when she rejoined Tremayne was how a body had ended up in there.

  Horsley was excited. Not only was there a Bronze Age skeleton inside the mound, but there was also the possibility that the person had been someone of note, and potentially there would be weapons, jewellery, even clothing fragments, although that was a long shot.

  ‘It could be a find of great significance once you’ve retrieved your body,’ Horsley said.

  Tremayne looked at the man, wondered how the archaeologist could be intelligent yet so naïve.

  ‘That’s not how it works,’ Tremayne said. ‘It’s a crime scene, modern day. That takes precedence over your – how many thousands of years old did you say the body was?’

  ‘We’ll need to conduct tests, but at least four thousand, possibly more. Do you realise that the person inside could have seen Stonehenge in its prime when it was of importance, not a tourist attraction?’

  ‘We’ll be careful,’ Clare said, ‘but you can’t expect us to hurry up just because of what you’ve found. There’ll be no more work by your team until we’ve concluded our investigation.’

  ‘I’m willing to help, but this is an important historical site. Pressure will be applied to maintain the integrity of it.’

  ‘You can do what you like,’ Tremayne said, annoyed by Horsley’s attitude, ‘but it’s a murder enquiry. We have total authority over this site.’

  ‘But, but…’

  ‘No buts,’ Tremayne said. ‘Our people will be sensitive to what is here, but they will conduct their investigation thoroughly and without hindrance. Do I make myself clear?’

  Horsley moved away, a resigned look on his face. He took his mobile phone out of his pocket and made a phone call.

  ‘Phoning the heavies,’ Clare said.

  ‘He’s right, of course,’ Tremayne said. ‘Let the uniforms know that they are not to go stomping around on the area with their hob-nailed boots.’

  ‘I think they know that already.’

  ‘I know it, just remind them. Horsley and his people have obtained authority to be here, and we’re bound to get a few phone calls to take care of the area.’

  ‘We will.’

  ‘Don’t ask Jim Hughes and his crime scene investigators to start ferreting around with a small trowel, down on their hands and knees, sifting through the soil.’

  ‘But that’s what they do.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll grant you that,’ Tremayne said. ‘Just make sure they don’t take too long before they give us an update on who it is and how long he’s been in there.’

  ‘A long time, at least ten to fifteen years, possibly more.’

  ‘Any updates on missing persons from the period?’

  ‘I’ve got people looking into it, but so far we can only give them a male adult. It’s not a lot to go on.’

  Tremayne walked away, trying to avoid the mud, not succeeding entirely. Back at his car, he switched on the engine and then the heater. He took out his phone and called Pathology. ‘I need an answer as soon as possible on this one,’ he said.

  ‘What’s the condition of the body?’ Stuart Collins, the pathologist, asked. He was a decent man, Tremayne knew that, always offering a comment on Tremayne’s inevitable pressure to prioritise his case over any others.

  ‘Not good, in the ground for a
long time. It’ll take some time to get the body out; it’s a damn archaeological site, and we’ll have to be careful, or we’ll have the heritage society or whoever it is on to us.’

  ‘Get the body to me by seven this evening, and I’ll start on it at 8 a.m. tomorrow.’

  ‘Good man,’ Tremayne said. He stretched out his legs, conscious of the aches and pains, fearful of his mortality. One major health scare so far, and his father had died in his fifties. And with Jean back in his life, he intended to enjoy many years more with her.

  Not that he’d ever tell Clare, his sergeant, how he felt about his wife. She’d be on the phone to Jean in an instance. The two of them were as thick as thieves, and they were always comparing notes about his health and what they should do to keep him on the straight and narrow.

  Clare Yarwood had suffered in her short life. She had seen death the same as he had, – a woman drowned in a horse trough, another hanging from a beam, a man shot dead in a church. She had seen plenty, even the love of her life when he had forfeited his life for her. The man had turned out to be bad but had redeemed himself in that one selfless sacrifice. She had tried to move on since, but her attempts had failed. There was a doctor who had been keen on her, and she on him, but it wasn’t to be. He had subsequently married someone else. Since then she had been on her own.

  Clare came and sat in the passenger seat of the car, a late-model Toyota. She was feeling cold as well.

  ‘There’s not a lot to go on,’ she said as she rubbed her hands in front of the heater vent.

  ‘What’s Horsley got to say?’

  ‘He’s complaining, worried that the site will be destroyed.’

  ‘He’s right, but the recent have precedence over the long dead. How long did he say?’

  ‘The mounds’ ages vary from 2100 to 1500 BC. It’s interesting, don’t you think?’ Clare said, knowing full well that Tremayne didn’t.

  Tremayne took out a cigarette from the packet that was inside his jacket pocket.

  ‘Not in here,’ Clare said. ‘You know the regulations.’

  ‘Give me a break. You’re as bad as Jean; do this, do that, wipe your feet when you enter the house.’