‘You think she stole it?’ Adi let out a long, slow breath. ‘That’s … wow.’
‘I don’t know if she stole anything. But this thing, Adi – this is very serious.’ Fiona leaned into her phone, huddled in her icy car, trying to keep her voice down. She didn’t want to be overheard.
And she absolutely didn’t want to have this conversation back at the house with the other archaeologists around.
‘I mean, I suppose I could understand it,’ Adi said.
‘What?’
‘Look, Fiona, perhaps she got desperate. You told me yourself that the money in archaeology is terrible. It sounds like she has a taste for the good life. She kicked Caspar into touch – he was the one paying for all the little luxuries. If you were digging and found something like that, just lying in the ground – you have to admit, it must be tempting.’
‘Tempting?’
‘You know, pick it up, stick it in your pocket. It’s been lying there for a thousand years. It’s not like anybody’s going to miss it anytime soon.’
‘Except it isn’t tempting,’ said Fiona, taken aback by Adi’s attitude. ‘It’s actually a really stupid thing to do, especially for an archaeologist. And she would know this.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s treasure.’
‘Well, obviously it’s valuable …’
‘No, I mean it’s treasure – that’s the legal name for it. And you don’t get to just keep any treasure you find. There are all these laws to stop our cultural heritage being sold off to private collectors abroad. You’ve got to tell the coroner in the first instance, and straight away. The minute you don’t, what you have in your hands is stolen goods.’
He laughed then, and again she was disturbed by his attitude. ‘Stolen from who?’
‘From us.’ She could hear the rising anger in her voice. ‘From the people.’
‘If I’m the people, I already own it. What’s to stop me from having it?’
‘Because something that belongs to everybody should be accessible to everybody! And not just sitting in the collections of Swiss banking fat cats like you go drinking with, which is where everything would end up if nobody stopped it!’
‘Hey, hey,’ said Adi, taken aback. ‘Easy, Fee …’
‘Sorry,’ said Fiona instantly, but something was growing inside her. She wasn’t sure she was sorry. But she said again, ‘Sorry. I’m just so worried. What was Madison thinking?’
‘As I was saying,’ said Adi, with a slight drawl, and she had the sense that her apology might not have gone far enough for him, and this too made her prickle with annoyance. ‘It could have been worth it to Madison. I was watching something on TV the other night where someone found all this gold with their metal detector, just out in a field, and it was worth hundreds of thousands of …’
‘It might be, but that’s money they’ve received after they’ve reported it and been paid for the find, and the objects end up in the British Museum or wherever. They didn’t steal that money, they had it legitimately.’ Fiona sighed, tried to sound conciliatory. ‘I mean, it’s all moot in Madison’s case. She wouldn’t get money for something that she found on a dig. Whoever is running the dig is responsible. But even then, it’s such an insane thing to do.’
‘Well, I could think of a few hundred thousand reasons to do it …’
‘But that’s just it. She’d never get anything like that, even if she did steal it. I did some consultation work a few months ago on some coins someone was trying to sell in the US. The finders never make the real money – the dealers do. They come up with the fake provenance and the pseudo-respectability. People don’t want to buy something that can be seized back from them by the government at any time.
‘And here’s the thing that really bothers me – that pendant is worth more to her professionally, to the power of ten, than she could earn selling it on the black market. If that came out of Helly Holm, then what with the boat and the bodies it’s a massively important discovery. She can be publishing things and writing papers on that, in partnership with Iris. Maybe get into Iris’s media work. It could be just the boost she needs.’
‘Fiona,’ he said, ‘listen to me. I think it’s time you came home.’
She fell silent, shocked.
‘I can’t just leave …’
‘Yes, you can. You absolutely can. And you should. Her family are there now, and the police can get in touch with you whenever they want.’
‘Adi, I can’t …’
‘What are you achieving there? What’s happening, except that you’re being hurt and exposed to all these things you can’t fix, and on your own? I can see how this is affecting you. So I’m flying back home tomorrow …’
‘I thought you were there another two days …’
‘Nah, I don’t need to be. I’m just here to present and answer questions.’
‘But they expect …’
‘I don’t give a shit what they expect. I’ve been thinking about this all afternoon. I know I’ve not been there for you. I might not have had a lot of time for Madison, but I know she was a huge part of your life and you’re destroyed right now, running off the rails, doing and saying crazy things …’
A mulish rebellion flickered within Fiona then – how do you know that I’m crazy?
‘Adi – I don’t … I feel like this is something I have to do.’
Silence fell between them, except that she could hear his breathing, very quiet, very light. It filled her with a longing and a homesickness that hurt like toothache.
But still, when she thought about it, imagined booking that ferry ticket, packing her things into her car – she felt a jangling sense of wrongness, of desertion.
She had unfinished business here. It was that simple.
Her silence was answer enough, it seemed.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I have to go now, there’s another dinner tonight. But I want you to think about this, Fee. I would really love you to come home.’
There was a lump in her throat. ‘I would love to come home too,’ she said, and her voice was thick, stuffed with all the words they never spoke. ‘I just have to wait until they bring her up. Once I know she’s gone …’ It was hard to breathe, suddenly. ‘I’ll come. I promise.’
‘Are you sure? Because I would love to see you.’
And the thought flashed through her mind then, ask him to come to you. Admit you are exhausted and grief-stricken and don’t want to do this alone.
Her mouth opened for a second, then closed.
It seemed too much, suddenly. He might downplay it now, but this trip of his was so important for his firm, his career. She just couldn’t ask it of him.
She bit her lip. The moment was gone.
‘Me too,’ was all she said.
A pause. ‘Okay. Sleep well.’ Another pause, and then, to her astonishment, he said, ‘I love you.’