‘The dogs,’ she said simply. She probably let the pack loose at night, thought Dryden. ‘Anyway, you couldn’t replace the best stuff,’ she added.
Dryden concentrated on the items set out on the green baize in the first cabinet. He recognized two rein rings like the ones found by Azeglio Valgimigli.
‘A chariot burial?’ he asked.
Ma retrieved some reading glasses from her hair and set a felt-mounted magnifying glass on the cabinet top. ‘Take a closer look.’
The rings were gold, set with opals, and the leather straps of the reins were still attached through eyelets.
‘How much?’ said Dryden.
She shrugged. ‘Treasure trove. I found them with the detector at Manea back in the eighties. Don’t worry, it’s all above board. I’ve got the documents,’ she said, noting Dryden’s surprise.
‘And the rest?’
‘This cabinet is all finds,’ she said, standing back so he could see the items more clearly.
Most of it was the dreaded pottery shards, but there were some gold and silver pins, a dagger blade, and some scraps of leather which Dryden presumed were the remains of shoes and belts.
‘Why didn’t you press on after Oxford – pursue a career? You studied archaeology?’
She nodded, the great head staying down. ‘Business to run,’ she answered, too loudly. ‘Father was on his own by then, and Mum had made him let me go in the first place.’ Dryden noted the subtle difference in parental categorization. ‘She’d missed out too – on an education. Bright as a button. Spent her life in this house.’
A gust of light wind thudded an unlatched gate closed somewhere out on the fen. Outside a gull glided into view in the whiteness, and then was gone.
‘Frustrating, then?’ said Dryden, and he saw the slabs of flesh ride over each other as she tried to disguise something worse than frustration. Ma turned and tore the second hessian sheet back with force; this cabinet, like the first, was largely full of pottery: ‘Anglo-Saxon,’ she said. ‘My period. These are all local.’
‘But you can’t find these with a metal detector.’
‘You walk the fields. The stuff just turns up, ploughing does it, and soil churning – it’s natural.’
‘And this?’ asked Dryden, laying his hand on the final cabinet.
When revealed, the final cabinet glittered under the interior light. ‘Purchases,’ said Ma.
One item caught Dryden’s attention, a tiny bone brooch inlaid with silver, lying beside a bone comb with delicate cochineal-red spiral designs.
‘They’re beautiful,’ said Dryden sincerely, taking the magnifying glass and positioning it over the brooch. ‘How d’you afford this stuff?’
‘The business makes money. This represents thirty years of the profits. I don’t have anything else. Family.’ As she said the word she leaned in, peering at one of the brooches, the tip of a red tongue running along her thin lips.
She stood in silence and Boudicca skittered through to nuzzle her hand.
‘Will you have to sell anything to cover costs if the dump’s closed?’
‘I can stretch to six months. I’ll lay off the men; it’s not a charity.’
Dryden nodded. ‘The smog’s corrosive, isn’t it? I’ve noticed the damage on cars in town – corrosion, like a bubbling.’
She hauled open her eyes so that Dryden could see both clearly, two dark grey pebbles. ‘The site is insured, Dryden. And we’re covered by the council’s insurance as well. So – all enquiries to the town hall, OK?’
She smiled but the visit was over. She carefully replaced the hessian screens. ‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention the collection at all. It’s not something I share.’
Dryden sensed she regretted showing him. ‘Sure,’ he said, meaning it.
She took him back through the house. There was a threadbare hall carpet and a ticking grandmother clock. By the door an array of Wellington boots, all the same size, stood beneath a Victorian hatstand.
‘One last question,’ said Dryden, savouring his favourite line. ‘Did anyone ever suspect there was anything under the PoW camp? Ever been on the site yourself?’
Ma already had the door half closed. ‘Most authorities agree the Anglo-Saxon settlement stretched to the west of the city, so there was always interest. I knew the farmer out there, I had a look round with the detector – but that would be the late eighties, perhaps earlier.’
‘Find anything?’
Ma edged the door shut. ‘Junk. From the camp mainly. Billy cans, some coins.’
Dryden had his foot, literally, in the closing door. ‘The detectors are that good, are they? Pick up a coin?’