Peter Lovesey - Upon A Dark Night

‘Stirring stuff,’ said Diamond. ‘So what can you tell me about the Tormarton sword? Was that thrown down by some unlucky fellow who copped his lot?’

‘I doubt if it was ever used in battle. I think it was partly made of silver, with some precious stones inlaid in the hilt, the kind of sword a nobleman owned as a symbol of his power. I guess it belonged to an important Saxon. Let’s see if there’s anything about it in these other books. Anglo-Saxon Artefacts should mention it.’ He took another book off the stand and turned to the index.

‘It’s here. With a picture.’ He found the page and handed Diamond the book.

It was a colour photograph of a short, single-bladed sword with its scabbard displayed beside it. ‘The Tormarton Seax, unearthed on farmland in North-West Wiltshire in 1943,’

the caption read. ‘This Frankish design came into use in England during the seventh century. The pommel is decorated with garnets set in silver, probably worked by a Frankish silversmith. The scabbard is also of silver. Acquired by the British Museum.’

‘Handsome,’ said Diamond.

‘But seventh century,’ Paternoster pointed out. ‘Well after the Battle of Dyrham. By then Tormarton was firmly in Saxon hands.’

‘So what do you reckon, Gary? How did it get in the ground?’

‘Difficult to say. Sometimes when people were being invaded or attacked, they buried valuable things to keep them safe, meaning to dig them up again later. If that was what happened, the sword should have been declared Treasure Trove, and the British Museum would have paid the farmer its market value. If it was buried in a grave, it belonged to the landowner. He might sell it to the Museum, but he could bargain for a better price than the valuation.’

‘Either way, he makes some money.’

‘Unless he decided to keep the treasure. If it isn’t Treasure Trove, he’s entitled to hang onto it.’

‘How do they decide?’

‘By inquest, so it’s up to the coroner and his jury. They have to try and work out why it was buried. If it’s found in a situation that is obviously a grave, there’s no argument. It belongs to the landowner.’

‘How can anyone tell? I suppose if it’s lying beside a skeleton.’

‘Archaeologists can usually tell. The difficulty comes with isolated finds.’

‘Was this an isolated find?’

Paternoster shrugged. ‘I’ve never heard of anything else turning up there. But to my knowledge the farm has never been searched or excavated. If the owner doesn’t want you there, there’s nothing you can do, and he’s said to be dead against us. He’s been asked many times. People like me can’t wait to get up there with our detectors.’

‘How does it work?’ Diamond asked.

‘Detectoring?’

‘I understand the principle, but what do you do exactly?’

The young man started to speak with genuine authority. ‘First you have to get the farmer’s permission, and like I say that isn’t so easy. I offer fifty-fifty on any finds, but we’re still just a nuisance to some of them. Obviously I wouldn’t ask if the field has just been sown. And a freshly ploughed field isn’t ideal because of the furrows, you see. It’s better when the soil is flatter, because more coins lie within range of your detector. So I like a harrowed field to work in.’

‘Do you find much in fields?’

‘Not so much as in parks or commons where people go more often, but what you find is more interesting.’

‘Such as?’

‘Silver medieval coins. My average is one every two or three hours. I’ve also found ring-brooches, buckles and bits of horse-harness.’

‘In bare fields?’

‘You’ve got to remember that in centuries past hundreds of people worked those fields. It was far more labour-intensive then than it is these days, with so much farm machinery.’

Diamond picked up one of the detectors and felt its weight. ‘What’s your most powerful model?’

‘The two-box. This one over here. It’s designed for people searching for hoards, rather than small items like single coins.’ He picked up a contraption with two sensors separated by a metre-length bar. ‘It can signal substantial amounts of metal at some depth, say six feet. The trouble is, you have to be prepared to do an awful lot of digging and possibly find something no more exciting than a buried oil-drum or a tractor-part.’

The two-box was a source of much interest for Diamond. He could see a plausible explanation for the digging at the farm. If some treasure-hunter had ambitions of finding a hoard, the most promising site, surely, would be one that had already yielded a famous find, and the best machine for the job was the two-box. And if the site-owner was a stubborn old farmer who steadfastly refused to allow anyone on his land, the first opportunity would have come after his death.

Was it, he wondered, sufficient motive for murder?

‘Have you sold any of these things in the last year or so?’

‘Two-boxes? No. This hasn’t been in the shop long.’

‘Can people hire them?’

‘I suppose we might come to an agreement, but we haven’t up to now.’

‘You just have, Gary. I’ll send someone to collect it.’

‘Up and running,’ Keith Halliwell announced with some pride.

Nobody was quicker than Halliwell at furnishing an incident room. Phones, radio-communications, computers and filing cabinets were in place. The photos and maps from the briefing session were rearranged on an end wall. Two civilian computer operators were keying information into the system. Having ordered all this, Diamond could not allow himself to be intimidated by it, even though he was a computer-illiterate. He mumbled some words of appreciation to Halliwell and even dredged up a joke about hardware: he hadn’t seen so much since his last visit to the ironmonger’s. The younger people didn’t seem to know what an ironmonger’s was, so it fell flat. Then he spotted Julie sitting with a phone against her ear. He went over. Telephones he could understand.

‘Who are you on to?’

She put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Acton Turville Post Office. Gladstone used to collect his pension from there. They’re checking dates.’

‘When you come off…’

She nodded, and started speaking into the phone again.

In the act of moving towards the sergeant who was handling press liaison, Diamond caught his foot under a cable and cut off the power supply to the computers.

‘Who the blazes did that?’ said one of the civilian women when her screen whistled and went blank. She was new to the murder squad.

‘I did, madam,’ he told her. ‘I almost fell into your lap. Next time lucky.’

‘You great oaf.’ Clearly she had no idea who she was addressing.

Halliwell zoomed over to prevent a dust-up. ‘I should have warned you, sir.’

‘About this abusive woman?’

‘About the cable. It needs a strip of gaffer tape.’

‘Bugger the cable,’ said Diamond. ‘She thinks you should tape the gaffer.’

‘His mouth, for starters,’ said the woman, before it dawned on her who this great oaf was.

With timing that just prevented mayhem, Julie finished on the phone and called across, ‘He last drew his pension on September 18th.’

‘In cash?’

‘He used to cycle in to Acton Turville once a week. He’d do some shopping and then cycle back.’

Stepping more carefully than before, he moved between the desks to where Julie was. ‘Didn’t anyone notice when he stopped coming in?’

‘Sometimes he would let it mount up for two or three weeks. People do.’

‘How would he manage for shopping?’

‘Tinned food, I suppose. The chickens supplied him with eggs. And another thing, Mr Diamond. I’ve called all the local banks and building societies and none of them had any record of him as an account-holder.’