10. THE NUGGET

Sometimes an instrument like a metal detector can discover invisible evidence....

“Whenever you’re ready,” called Rosie to Jerry.

It was next morning and she thought it wise if any metal detecting round the old caravan would best be done before the sun beat down too viciously into the clearing.

She didn’t know what she expected to find, if anything, but thought it worth the effort. If Jerry could find an old brooch lost in the sands at Seaholme he might be able to find something dropped thirty years ago in the ancient patch of woodland where a caravan had been dumped. At least it was a hope, and evidence for what had been confirmed by the pathologist Cardew Dingle as murder in the absence of a weapon close enough at hand for it to be treated as possible-suicide, was desperately thin on the ground.

In truth, there was nothing in the caravan of any interest but the old computer (which they had taken to Rosie’s van and tried to get to work but failed to do anything but be treated to its opening screen because there were no discs to put into its disc drive, and old computers from the eighties had little in-built programming. In addition when it came to discs, those it took were different from any discs Rosie had ever seen). And of course there were piles of huge dead black flies.

There was nothing to indicate who the dead woman was, except the dress she was wearing which Rosie thought must have been expensive when it was new. There was bedding, of course, but unlikely to retain any useful DNA from those who had slept in it thirty years ago because it still looked fairly unused despite the decades that had passed. There were clothes in the wardrobe, all women’s and all, thought Rosie, belonging to the dead woman as they were of one size.

The corpse herself had been taken to Dingle’s mortuary where he was enjoying his poking through her dried-out sinews and disjointed bones of the skeleton.

In fact, everything was useless as pointers to who had shot the woman. Except she was dead and someone surely had. There wasn’t even any pointer to a reason why she had been murdered. Nothing whatsoever to point Rosie in the right direction, and it was frustrating.

“Whenever you’re ready,” she repeated, and Jerry appeared in his caravan doorway, carrying his metal detector.

“Don’t be so impatient,” he joked, and half-ran towards her.

They had already been joined by Constable Allsop from the Seaholme station. He represented the only manpower it could spare because the pressure of too much work had every man and woman fully engaged in maintaining a decent attention to law and order in Seaholme.

It took them next to no time to get to the scene of the crime. In Rosie’s absence a much shorter route had been discovered, one that started close to the site-owner’s bungalow and must have been the route the caravan had been towed along in the first place. Now it was overgrown and wild, and nothing bigger than a child’s trolley could be towed along it.

Rosie was surprised at how close the deserted old van was to Seven Trees site.

“The gun must have had a silencer or it would have been heard quite clearly by anyone camping at the time,” she said thoughtfully.

“That’s what we think, ma’am,” replied Danny Allsop.

The ground around the caravan wasn’t as overgrown as it might have been. Quite obviously it had once been a clearing, which was why it had been chosen by those who had towed the van, and nothing worth worrying about had grown there in all the years since, leaving what was tantamount to a bald patch with the caravan in its middle like an ugly growth on an old pate. Rosie thought that long ago there may have been a forest fire which had scorched the life out of the soil in that area, but that was only speculation.

“Let’s look all around it, as close to it as we can and out until the undergrowth gets in the way,” she suggested.

It didn’t take Jerry very long at all to find a spot that caused his metal detector to bleep like a demented banshee. Suddenly, it was alive and he stood stock still, twiddling one knob in order to make it discriminate between various metals.

“This may well be gold,” he said slowly, “though I’ve never actually found any so I’m not absolutely certain.”

He started digging. Cat wasn’t with them, looking after the twins, so Rosie took the trowel from him and carefully scraped away at the tough surface, which was largely compressed matter with a layer of stones and pebbles making it hard to get into while he angled his detector to find the place where the bleeping was loudest.

It didn’t take long because nothing could have worked its way very far down in that tough earth. But her trowel struck something that shone with the light of suns when she saw it.

“Gold!” gasped Jerry, and he took the trowel from Rosie and gently scraped away until he had unearthed whatever it was.

There could be no doubt. It was gold. Pure gold, unshaped and unfashioned, a globule nugget that looked as if only yesterday it might have dripped casually from a furnace where it had been melted and from where it had been lost.

“So this answers one big question,” breathed Rosie, “as to why the van was brought here in the first place. It seems that whoever came here was either looking for gold, or more likely, thieves who had stolen some and had a portable furnace which might have been used to melt it!”

“And this dropped out,” sighed Jerry. “But whose is it?”

“Yours, I should think, though don’t quote me just yet,” replied Rosie, “but it’s not going to be easy to find who owned the original jewellery or whatever was melted down and I reckon it’ll end up being finders-keepers.”

“Is that a crucible?” called Constable Danny Allsop, who had started looking around and was peering under the caravan. He had a strong length of wood in one hand and was digging at something actually under it and hidden by the flat tyre of one of its wheels. Unable to shift whatever it was easily, he lay on the ground and reached under.

After a great deal of grunting and gasping and pulling and heaving he dragged what looked like a small witch’s cauldron from where it had lain for thirty or more years. It was iron and rusty, but had quite obviously been used with heat.

“It must be,” muttered Jerry. “Pity it’s not full to overflowing with precious gold!”

“But it may well have been what the stuff was melted in,” murmured the constable. “As I see it, this van was owned by a gang of thieves who raided holidaymakers for their gold and stuff and brought it here where they were unlikely to be discovered, to melt it before it could be recognised. It must have been quite an operation!”

“And as often happens with thieves, they fell out,” concluded Rosie, “hence our corpse. I think you’re right, Danny. I think this was once the sharp end of an operation that made quite a lot of money, especially if they had enough to not bother looking for the nugget that Jerry’s got in his hand! It’ll probably be evidence for the time being, Jerry, but when and it everything’s done and dusted I’ll see if I can make it yours.”

“Or those who were robbed,” said Jerry, “we mustn’t forget them.”

“It’s never likely to be identified,” Rosie told him. Once gold is melted it’s very hard to tell where it started out even if it’s possible.”

“Is it possible?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, but I somehow doubt it,” she said. “Come on, if there’s nothing else here let’s get back. Now that we know a bit more it might be easier to catch the killer!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

© Peter Rogerson 29.03.17