spread with sheets of drawing paper, and an incredible quantity of what appeared to be broken pottery, stuffed into plastic bags and crammed onto those perforated DIY metal shelves.
“Finds,” said Hunt, flapping a hand at the shelves. “I suppose . . . Well, no, maybe some other time. Some very nice jettons and clothing hooks.”
“We’d love to see them another day, Dr. Hunt,” I said. “Could you give us about ten minutes and then send Damien Donnelly in to us?”
“Damien,” said Hunt, and wandered off. Cassie shut the door behind him. I said, “How on earth does he run a whole excavation?” and started clearing away the drawings: fine, delicately shaded pencil sketches of an old coin, from various angles. The coin itself, sharply bent on one side and patchy with encrustations of earth, sat in the middle of the desk in a Ziploc bag. I found space for them on top of a filing cabinet.
“By hiring people like that Mark guy,” Cassie said. “I bet he’s plenty organized. What was with the hair clip?”
I squared off the edges of the drawings. “I think Jamie Rowan was wearing one that matched that description.”
“Ah,” she said. “I wondered. Is that in the file, do you know, or do you just remember it?”
“What difference does that make?” It came out sounding snottier than I’d intended.
In the Woods 37
“Well, if there’s a link, we can’t exactly keep it to ourselves,” Cassie said reasonably. “Just for example, we’re going to have to get Sophie to check that blood against the ’84 samples, and we’re going to have to tell her why. It would make things a whole lot simpler to explain if the link was right there in the file.”
“I’m pretty sure it is,” I said. The desk rocked; Cassie found a blank sheet of paper and folded it to wedge under the leg. “I’ll double-check tonight. Hold off on talking to Sophie till then, OK?”
“Sure,” said Cassie. “If it’s not there, we’ll find a way round it.” She tested the desk again: better. “Rob, are you OK with this case?”
I didn’t answer. Through the window I could see the morgue guys wrapping the body in plastic, Sophie pointing and gesturing. They barely had to brace themselves to lift the stretcher; it looked almost weightless as they carried it away towards the waiting van. The wind rattled the glass sharply in my face and I spun round. I wanted, suddenly and fiercely, to shout, “Shut the hell up” or “Fuck this case, I quit” or something, something reckless and unreasonable and dramatic. But Cassie was just leaning against the desk and waiting, looking at me with steady brown eyes, and I have always had an excellent brake system, a gift for choosing the anticlimactic over the irrevocable every time.
“I’m fine with it,” I said. “Just kick me if I get too moody.”
“With pleasure,” Cassie said, and grinned at me. “God, though, look at all this stuff. . . . I hope we do get a chance to have a proper look. I wanted to be an archaeologist when I was little, did I ever tell you?”
“Only about a million times,” I said.
“Lucky you’ve got a goldfish memory, then, isn’t it? I used to dig up the back garden, but all I ever found was a little china duck with the beak broken off.”
“It looks like I should have been the one digging out the back,” I said. Normally I would have made some remark about law enforcement’s loss being archaeology’s gain, but I was still feeling too nervy and dislocated for any decent level of back and forth; it would only have come out wrong. “I could have had the world’s biggest private collection of pottery bits.”
“Now there’s a pick-up line,” said Cassie, and dug out her notebook.
. . .
38
Tana French
Damien came in awkwardly, with a plastic chair bumping along from one hand and his mug of tea still clutched in the other. “I brought this . . .” he said, using the mug to gesture uncertainly at his chair and the two we were
“Finds,” said Hunt, flapping a hand at the shelves. “I suppose . . . Well, no, maybe some other time. Some very nice jettons and clothing hooks.”
“We’d love to see them another day, Dr. Hunt,” I said. “Could you give us about ten minutes and then send Damien Donnelly in to us?”
“Damien,” said Hunt, and wandered off. Cassie shut the door behind him. I said, “How on earth does he run a whole excavation?” and started clearing away the drawings: fine, delicately shaded pencil sketches of an old coin, from various angles. The coin itself, sharply bent on one side and patchy with encrustations of earth, sat in the middle of the desk in a Ziploc bag. I found space for them on top of a filing cabinet.
“By hiring people like that Mark guy,” Cassie said. “I bet he’s plenty organized. What was with the hair clip?”
I squared off the edges of the drawings. “I think Jamie Rowan was wearing one that matched that description.”
“Ah,” she said. “I wondered. Is that in the file, do you know, or do you just remember it?”
“What difference does that make?” It came out sounding snottier than I’d intended.
In the Woods 37
“Well, if there’s a link, we can’t exactly keep it to ourselves,” Cassie said reasonably. “Just for example, we’re going to have to get Sophie to check that blood against the ’84 samples, and we’re going to have to tell her why. It would make things a whole lot simpler to explain if the link was right there in the file.”
“I’m pretty sure it is,” I said. The desk rocked; Cassie found a blank sheet of paper and folded it to wedge under the leg. “I’ll double-check tonight. Hold off on talking to Sophie till then, OK?”
“Sure,” said Cassie. “If it’s not there, we’ll find a way round it.” She tested the desk again: better. “Rob, are you OK with this case?”
I didn’t answer. Through the window I could see the morgue guys wrapping the body in plastic, Sophie pointing and gesturing. They barely had to brace themselves to lift the stretcher; it looked almost weightless as they carried it away towards the waiting van. The wind rattled the glass sharply in my face and I spun round. I wanted, suddenly and fiercely, to shout, “Shut the hell up” or “Fuck this case, I quit” or something, something reckless and unreasonable and dramatic. But Cassie was just leaning against the desk and waiting, looking at me with steady brown eyes, and I have always had an excellent brake system, a gift for choosing the anticlimactic over the irrevocable every time.
“I’m fine with it,” I said. “Just kick me if I get too moody.”
“With pleasure,” Cassie said, and grinned at me. “God, though, look at all this stuff. . . . I hope we do get a chance to have a proper look. I wanted to be an archaeologist when I was little, did I ever tell you?”
“Only about a million times,” I said.
“Lucky you’ve got a goldfish memory, then, isn’t it? I used to dig up the back garden, but all I ever found was a little china duck with the beak broken off.”
“It looks like I should have been the one digging out the back,” I said. Normally I would have made some remark about law enforcement’s loss being archaeology’s gain, but I was still feeling too nervy and dislocated for any decent level of back and forth; it would only have come out wrong. “I could have had the world’s biggest private collection of pottery bits.”
“Now there’s a pick-up line,” said Cassie, and dug out her notebook.
. . .
38
Tana French
Damien came in awkwardly, with a plastic chair bumping along from one hand and his mug of tea still clutched in the other. “I brought this . . .” he said, using the mug to gesture uncertainly at his chair and the two we were
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