SEVENTY-SIX

The road split ahead, offering Elias a choice between Nettleham HQ and home. Both filled him with such profound dismay, however, that in the end he opted for a third. If Priya Kapur’s testimony held up, it would seem to clear Gregory Scott of Dunstan Warne’s murder, and lead to his likely release without charge. And Anna deserved to be told this in person rather than learning it from the news.

Merchant wasn’t home, however. Nor was his car in its spot. He tried Anna’s mobile, in case she’d managed to retrieve it somehow, but got only voicemail. Same with Merchant. They were probably out for a drink or a bite to eat. Or maybe he’d taken her to see her uncle’s solicitor. There were all kinds of possibilities.

He was in no great rush to get anywhere so he parked in Merchant’s spot and left a note beneath his wiper for them to call him. Then he wandered down to Westgate and Lincoln Cathedral, as good a place for contemplation as a man could wish for.

Evensong was underway. He could hear the singing from outside.  He turned his phone to vibrate before going in, then took a pew at the back. His wife had been a believer, and had insisted on bringing the kids up that way too, so that at one time he’d come here often. But then their son had died, and he’d stopped. He closed his eyes, bowed his head and rested his chin upon his clasped hands, for all the world in prayer, but in truth still brooding on the case – though perhaps that was prayer too, after a fashion.

Priya Kapur might well be flat-out lying about Gregory Scott having spent the night with her, of course. People would do that for the ones they loved. More likely, though, she was shading the truth a little, perhaps about what time he’d left. If he’d headed off at five-thirty, say, he could have heard or seen something in Warne’s fields that had prompted him to investigate. If so, he might have caught Warne digging his hole to plant his silver pennies. Except that the pennies would already have been planted by then, covered by several inches of silt. So why kill him?

The organist and choir started on a new hymn, flooding the great space with their gorgeous music. I will lift up mine eyes they sang, prompting Elias to do just that, gazing up at the stained glass windows for which the cathedral was so justly famous. He was too far away to make out their detail. They simply gleamed with colour instead, as though handfuls of rubies, sapphires, emeralds and other such gemstones had been tossed haphazardly into a set of bowls. And only then did he realise what should have been obvious: those forty-six silver pennies might not have been all that Warne had brought home to plant. He might have had hundreds more. And not just coins, indeed, but other kinds of treasure too, intending to bury it at various spots around his fields, so that he might rediscover it at appropriate intervals. A knapsack full of that would most certainly have been worth killing for.

Elias could almost picture the scene, indeed, with Scott gazing down at it all in disbelief, demanding to know where it had come from, while Warne told him angrily to get off his land. Easy to imagine them coming to blows, a pair of medieval knights hammering at each other with their spades, until Scott had caught Warne with his killing blow, leaving him little choice but to bury him and flee.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Quinn. He hurried back outside before answering, surprised by the new chill of the night air.

‘Hey,’ he said, hugging his jacket tight around himself. ‘What’s up?’

‘I’ve found your fields,’ she told him. ‘At least I’ve found fields of roughly the right shape alongside a pair of oaks and a cobbled lane. But please understand that the satellite photos I’m comparing them to were taken in the summer and from a different angle too. Everything looks a bit off, so I can’t be one hundred percent—’

‘I get it,’ said Elias. ‘It’s hard. Where?’

‘Yes, that’s the other thing. It’s between a village called Wellingore and a place called Temple Bruer. We took the boys there for a picnic a couple of years back. It used to be this great big Templar estate, so they say. And that was Mr Warne’s kind of history, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, it was,’ said Elias. ‘Brilliant work. Thanks.’ Temple Bruer. Dunstan Warne had had some kind of pamphlet or paper about it on his desk, which Anna had boxed up and taken away with her. What was more, he’d driven right by it barely an hour ago, on returning to Lincoln from Fenton Airfield, following exactly the same route that Anna and Oliver would most likely have taken themselves. Was it possible, then, that she’d realised its significance, and that that was where she and Merchant were right now? She had all the information she’d have needed, and she was most certainly sharp enough. He briefly considered sending a car to look, except that it could embarrass her or even get her into trouble. Yet he could hardly stand by while they trampled over a site of potential material importance in the investigation of her uncle’s murder.

He hurried back to his car and set off south.