Стивен Бут - Drowned Lives

‘Well, in theory it might work.’

‘Absolutely. In fact, it was done in the case of the Tsar Nicholas II and his family, the Romanovs. You know — the Russian royal family?’

‘Of course.’

‘I read about it in one of the Sunday papers. They were killed following the Bolshevik uprising in 1918. Their bodies were left buried in a mass grave for years and years, because the Communists didn’t want to know about them. But with perestroika and all that, people got interested again, and the bodies were dug up. Some said they weren’t the Romanovs at all. But in the end they were identified by a DNA match to a blood sample from the Duke of Edinburgh, no less. He’s a distant relative of the Romanovs via Queen Victoria. I’m a bit weak on the history of the royal family, I’m afraid.’

‘I believe Prince Philip is related to the Tsarina Alexandra, Nicholas’s wife,’ said Graham, surprising me.

‘There you are then,’ I said. ‘It works all right. If it’s good enough for the Duke of Edinburgh...’

He smiled. ‘Nice try.’

‘Can we do it?’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t think there’s any justification for it at the moment. But we’ll bear your suggestion in mind.’

I sagged back in my chair. ‘You’re not interested in finding out who it is.’

‘It’s purely of academic interest. There’s hardly going to be any prosecution. On that basis, we couldn’t justify the cost.’

‘I see. It all comes down to money, in the end?’

I got up, ready to go.

‘By the way,’ said DS Graham, looking as if he suddenly felt sorry for me, ‘would you be interested in knowing what possessions were found with the remains?’

‘I doubt it.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, there wasn’t much, admittedly. A few coins, pretty worn away. Part of a shoe, a buckle. I’m sorry they’re not more interesting.’

‘No.’

I was already putting on my coat to leave.

‘But there was this. It’s the best preserved item of all.’

He was holding a small leather pouch, wrinkled and rotting into holes.

‘It doesn’t look very well preserved,’ I said.

‘I meant what’s in it. It’s survived pretty well.’

‘What has?’

‘The water has got to the handle a bit,’ he said. ‘But it’s basically okay, even after all this time.’

‘But what is?’ I was aware that I was starting to sound like a parrot, but I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.

And then I had a blinding surge of conviction. I knew what was in the pouch.

‘It’s a key, isn’t it?’ I said.

But DS Graham frowned. ‘A key? Why would you think that? No, it’s a hand stamp. The SOCOs tell me it’s made of rosewood and brass. Look, Mr Buckley. It’s a stamp for making wax seals.’

In the post next morning was a manila envelope with my address showing in a little window, except that it was simply headed to ‘The Occupier’.

The letter came from an Executive Officer in the Traffic Management and Tolls Division at the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, who was writing in response to a printed card I’d signed and sent in protesting against the link road. He informed me that the statutory decision could not be altered, but that the Secretary of State had weighed all the various material considerations in taking his decision.

The tone of his letter was very reasonable. The thing that annoyed me most was that they hadn’t bothered with my name. I was sure the card had included my name as well as my address. Addressing me as ‘The Occupier’ made me feel like a statistic rather than an individual. It diminished me, and denied my identity.

I wondered again about Samuel’s name change. Why had he done that? He’d deliberately denied his identity as a Buckley. It didn’t make sense for a man who’d been so concerned about family. It was just one of the contradictions in my great-uncle’s life. I had bits and pieces of information in my hands, but could see no way to fit them together, like an incomplete jigsaw. And the more I found out about Samuel’s life, the further away it seemed to lead me from the truth about his death.

Rachel came in almost straight after breakfast and found me looking glum.

‘Chin up, number six,’ she said cheerfully. ‘What’s the matter?’

I showed her the ancient stamp DS Graham had given me. It had a nicely turned wooden handle — rosewood, Graham had said. And at one end was an impression of the Ogley and Huddlesford Canal Company’s seal set into brass, the image of a pit-head with a stylised beam-engine.

Rachel cooed over it as if it had been a diamond-encrusted tiara.

‘So much history right here,’ she said, turning it over in her hands and stroking its blackened sides.

‘And none of it good.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘From the police. I went to see them about the body that was found at Fosseway Wharf.’

‘So you do think William Buckley might have been murdered. And the body could be his?’

I shrugged. ‘It was a theory, that’s all. We’ll never know, since they won’t do a DNA comparison.’

I was conscious of Rachel studying my face, but I avoided meeting her eye.

‘Well, there’s something I want to ask you about anyway,’ she said. ‘That’s why I called round.’

As if she needed any excuses to ‘call round’, I thought. But of course I didn’t say it.

‘Oh, what’s that?’ I asked.

‘ This continuing feud .’

‘What?’

‘In one of his letters, Samuel has written a phrase I don’t understand: This continuing feud . What feud was he talking about?’

‘There was some kind of dispute within the Buckley family. The split between the two brothers, Samuel and my grandfather.’

Rachel wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t think he means that. He seems to be talking about a feud between two families.’

‘But who could that be?’

‘I don’t know. Rivals to the Buckleys? Somebody William upset over the canal scheme? A family angry with Thomas over some girl he got pregnant? And wasn’t Josiah supposed to have got into a fight with someone? It could be anybody.’

‘Hold on, there’s something there — an idea at the back of my mind.’

‘Best place for it, probably, given the sort of trouble your ideas land you in. It’s getting a bit dangerous, Chris.’

‘Find the first bit of Samuel’s manuscript. It’s in the file there.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘There’s a name on the tip of my tongue.’

She pulled out the file. ‘What exactly am I looking for?’

‘Go back to the beginning of the manuscript. Look for the names of the canal company proprietors.’

‘Okay.’

She turned over the pages until she reached the beginning. She didn’t need to read the opening paragraphs, because I could remember the exact words. ‘Major international events in the closing years of the eighteenth century were the key to the future of Britain’s inland waterways system.’

‘There was Anthony Nall and his brother Joshua, who was Deputy Lieutenant,’ said Rachel. ‘There was the doctor, James Allwood. Edward Wilkinson, an apothecary. Adam Henshall... Now that Nall — he sounds a nasty piece of work.’

‘No.’

‘Or there’s Robert Sykes the publican. John Frith the solicitor, and his partner Daniel Metcalf, who was company secretary. The Parker family — Seth and Isaac, the bankers. Did you know that Seth’s son Francis was transported to Australia for theft? That must have caused a bit of upset. And then there was the visionary, the Reverend Thomas Ella, of course.’

‘Parker.’

‘What?’

‘The Parker family. I knew there was something ringing a bell. What were their names? Seth and Isaac?’