I lived in Savannah for five years, signing on with trading ships for short voyages when I needed money. But my heart cried out for home & at length I decided I must take my chances. The country being in the grip of war against Bonaparte, I believed my return might go unnoticed. I informed my dear brother Edward of my decision & placed myself in his hands. When I landed at Bristol, he sent word that I was to meet him at an inn near Bath. When we embraced for the first time in more than ten years my heart felt swollen in my chest & I could scarce breathe. We were agreed that I should journey to the Isle of Man, where our friends & relations would be happily complicit in keeping my identity a secret from outsiders. My brother had papers for me in the name of John Wilson & I made my way safely back to a place that felt akin to home. But I confess this life of quiet chafed with me. I am not a man built for idleness. Furthermore, the sea called me like a siren song. I dared not sign on with any regular ship under a British flag for fear of being recognised even after all these years. In conclusion, I was faced with only one possibility, & for the past two years, I have earned a fine living as a smuggler. I have become a familiar of the shoals of the Solway Firth, bringing brandy & claret to the gentry & the commons without the intercession of the exciseman. I do not pretend that this is a noble calling. But it suits my temper & it presents me with the opportunity to exercise my one skill of seamanship. However, mine is a life not without risk. & rivalry & I fear that I will not make old bones. For that reason, I have come to you that you might set down the true tale of Fletcher Christian, mutineer of the Bounty Bounty that men may know my true fate that men may know my true fate.
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Jane decided she liked the hospital room. It was white and it was quiet and she didn't feel ill enough to be scared by what being there might mean. According to the doctor, she'd suffered minor smoke inhalation, a painful but medically minor blow to the head, plus assorted cuts and bruises. They were only keeping her in for observation because they'd thought her incoherence on arrival had to do with concussion. But then, doctors were not trained to diagnose grief.There was, she knew, a police officer outside her door. The one on duty first thing had been really helpful, calling Rigston and telling him she was ready to make a statement. She knew she wasn't going to be able to hold her emotions at bay for long and she wanted to get the events of the night off her chest before they became blurred by her reactions to them. The inspector had been there within twenty minutes and in spite of the attempts of the nursing staff to thwart Jane's desire to talk, he'd taken a statement from her. He hadn't given her an easy ride, threatening at one point that he would charge her with police obstruction if only to make sure she stayed in one place for long enough for him to complete his enquiries without any further catastrophe. But by the end of their conversation, she felt from him a grudging acceptance of her version of events.'You need to stay here while I examine the evidence and decide whether you're telling the truth,' he said firmly when they were done. 'I'm leaving an officer on the door. He'll have orders to arrest you if you try to escape.''I promise I'll stay put if you answer two questions for me,' Jane said.'I'm the one who asks the questions.'Jane pulled a face. 'Spare me the hard-boiled cop routine. First thing I want to know is what happened to the papers that I had tucked into my waistband last night?''Your precious manuscript is back in the hands of its owner,' Rigston said. 'It's up to Mrs Wright now what she does with it. And I don't want her pressurised in any way. She's an old lady and she's just lost her home in traumatic circumstances. Are we clear on that?'Jane closed her eyes and sighed. 'I'm not in any fit state to go round monstering old ladies. Trust me on that.''What was your other question?' Rigston asked.'Will you please pay attention to what DI Blair has to say about Tenille? She needs a break. I know she broke the law, but look at it this way: what she did triggered what happened last night. Without her intervention, you might never have solved those murders.'Rigston shook his head in exasperation. 'I'm not making any promises. It's not my job to let criminals walk away from their crimes.'She'd pushed him on the point, but he would say nothing more concrete. And she was too tired to carry on. Seeing that, he made his escape, leaving her to silence and white and the insistent nag of grief.Her isolation didn't last nearly long enough. The nurse granted her parents twenty minutes. Judy wept for eighteen of them while her father sat gripping her hand as if he would never let it go. Matthew, Diane and Gabriel were given ten minutes. Little was said that didn't revolve around Gabriel but it felt like the start of something different between them.None of this eased the terrible ache in her heart. Dan's treachery was terrible, but her conviction that Jake was complicit only compounded the bitter taste of betrayal. And somewhere in the middle of all this, Tenille had got lost. She had made promises that she had failed to keep, and that hurt almost as much as what Dan and Jake had taken from her. And who, she wondered, had broken the news to Harry that his lover had been killed by one of his closest friends? The occasions for grief just kept piling up around her.Rigston came back late in the afternoon, bringing an air of satisfaction into the room with him. 'I think we're there,' he said. 'We found Dan Seabourne's prints in Edith Clewlow's house where they had no business being because you were never there with him. No joy so far at any of the others, but, if you're telling the truth, those later deaths were premeditated and he probably had the sense to wear gloves. We checked with Jimmy Clewlow and although he gives Seabourne a partial alibi for a couple of the deaths, he had enough of a window of opportunity to commit the murders.'We also checked out his computer. As well as the email address you were using for him, he had another anonymous account. And we found an exchange of emails with Caroline Kerr, your pal Jake Hartnell's boss. They were negotiating for her to handle the sale of the manuscript. That's what Jake was doing parked up by Irish Row. He was supposed to have a rendezvous with the vendor, though neither he nor Ms Kerr will admit to knowing the vendor's identity. Nor that what they were negotiating for was going to be stolen property.''Stupid greedy bastard,' Jane said. But at least stupidity and cupidity were better than conspiracy to commit murder. It was small comfort, but it was better than nothing.'They usually are. Unfortunately I can't find anything to charge him with.' He sighed, staring out of the window with a glum expression on his face. 'Can't bloody find anything to charge you with either. This job's a pain in the arse sometimes.''What about Tenille?' Jane hardly dared ask.'Her auntie's coming to fetch her tomorrow.' He shook his head. 'I'm a fool to myself sometimes. I'm counting on you to keep her honest.''Thank you,' Jane said. 'I won't let you down.''Mind you don't.' He got to his feet. 'Oh, and Dr Wilde says she'll be in touch when she's got something concrete to report.' He paused on his way to the door and turned back. 'Get yourself some counselling,' he said gruffly. 'Five deaths is a lot to carry on your conscience. Especially when they're not your fault.'Rigston had been followed in short order by the doctor, who pronounced her well enough to go home and free up his acute bed. To her surprise, when she had emerged from the room dressed in the clean clothes her mother had brought, her father was sitting on a chair further down the hall, twisting his cap in his hands. He jumped to his feet as she walked unsteadily towards him. 'I sent your mother home with Diane and Matthew,' he said. 'She was doing everybody's head in.'Jane felt the prickle of fresh tears. 'I love you, Dad,' she said, linking her arm through his. By the time they arrived back at the farm, Jane was so tired she could barely climb out of the Land Rover and walk indoors. The stairs looked like a mountain, but she dragged herself up. At the top, she looked down at the anxious face of her father. 'I need to sleep for about a week,' she said. 'Tell Mum to please let me sleep.'Jane took the stairs one at a time, steeling herself for a major smother attack from her mother. When she opened the kitchen door, she was astonished to see Alice Clewlow sitting at the table with the inevitable mug of tea. Her mother was nowhere to be seen. 'Judy's just popped out to the shops,' Alice said, as if her presence was as routine as the view from the window.'I didn't expect to see you here,' Jane said weakly, slumping into the nearest chair.'Somebody needed to talk to you and Jimmy's too wrapped up in his own bloody psychodrama to be any use to man nor beast so I thought I'd better pick up the baton.' Alice gave her an appraising stare. 'You look like shit.''Feel like it too. Look, I'm sorry about Jenny's house. I...''I didn't come here to get an apology. I came here to make one. I'm sorry I was so bloody rude to you at Edith's wake. I should have known a Fellhead Gresham wouldn't be out to cheat my family. If I'd listened to you then, we might have saved a few lives.'Jane shook her head. 'I've been over this in my head so many times. Dan was set on his course. I don't think anything would have stopped him till he got his hands on that manuscript. There's no point in either of us beating ourselves up.''Not that that will stop us,' Alice said drily. 'Anyway, I'm sorry for what I said.''It's OK, Alice.' Jane managed a weak smile. 'And I should apologise for introducing Dan to Jimmy.'Alice snorted. 'He's always had appalling taste in men.' She took a drink of tea.'Can I ask you something, Alice?'Alice looked slightly wary. 'Sure.''How did Jenny end up with the manuscript?'Alice looked relieved. 'That's easy. It passed down from Dorcas to her eldest, Arthur, and he entrusted it to his eldest, Beattie. And Jenny was Beattie's favourite. So she got the family heirloom with strict injunctions to keep the Wordsworth family skeleton firmly locked away in the closet. It was only when she understood people were dying for it that she realised she had to give it up.''That makes sense,' Jane said.Alice fiddled with the handle of her mug. 'Jane, I didn't just come here to apologise to you. I came because I've got good news and I've got bad news for you.''Oh Christ,' Jane said. 'I don't know if I can take any more bad news. This has been the worst week of my life.' She pushed her hair back from her face. 'Better let me have the bad news first. Then at least I have something to look forward to.''Jenny wasn't totally frank with you,' Alice said, her manner halting and awkward. 'She's cautious by nature, is Jenny. So she let you have the notes, to see how you behaved. Like, could you keep a confidence? Would you try to talk her into selling them? Would you treat them with respect, or would you just try to make a name for yourself off the back of them. It was a kind of test...'Jane suddenly felt cold. 'Oh God, Alice. Oh please, no...'Alice blinked hard. 'I'm afraid so. She had the poem too, Jane. About sixty pages long, loosely bound between leather covers. Handwritten. She kept them separate in case she was ever burgled. So that, if she lost one, she'd have the other as a sort of insurance policy. She kept the poem stuffed inside a pillow in her bedroom.' She took a deep breath. 'So, yes. There was a poem. But now there isn't.'Tears spilled from Jane's eyes. 'Oh God, no,' she wailed. 'This is a disaster.''The thing is,' Alice continued, 'it's a disaster nobody's going to know about. Nobody blames you. The family's talked about this and we're all agreed, nobody's going to say a word about what's been lost. Your reputation's not going to suffer.''To hell with my reputation,' Jane stuttered. 'The poem's lost forever. And it's all my fault. If I hadn't got so het up about it, it would still be safe. Your relatives would still be alive and so would bloody Dan.' She sniffed. 'How am I going to live with myself after this?'Alice got up and put an arm round Jane's shaking shoulders. 'Stop it, now,' she said, her low voice genuinely comforting. 'That kind of talk is pointless. What's done is done. You couldn't have known any of this would happen. I meant it when I said nobody blames you, and we're the ones with the right to dish out the blame. And here's the good news. Jenny wants you to have first crack at the notes. You can still make something marvellous out of all this mess. Please, don't get eaten up with guilt.''I can't help it,' Jane snivelled. 'I feel so bad about all of this.'Alice pulled up a chair so she could hold Jane against her shoulder. 'There's something else I have to tell you that might help you look on the bright side. I took Jenny out to her place yesterday afternoon. And half a dozen cats came out of the undergrowth as if by magic, rubbing themselves against her legs. And you know what she said? She said, "I always hated that house, Alice. Bloody miserable place. But it had been in the family for generations, it wasn't my right to walk away from it. Now I can have a nice little bungalow with big windows so I can see the view. I can see out my days in comfort." So you see, it's truly not all bad.'
The burden of my friends story contains all the elements necessary to compose a thrilling yet moral narrative of mans vanity & fallibility. I cannot but feel it is the ideal subject for a-Poet with my gifts, & I f eel it singing in my veins even now. The tragedy is that I will not enjoy its praise in my lifetime, for to publish it would bring calumny upon me & my family. Yet after my death, it may please the world to learn the truth of the matter that so exercised the public prints at the time of Bligh's return. I vouchsafe that any man who reads my words will not fail to be moved by the tragic case of Mr Fletcher Christian, a man more sinned against than sinning.Post Scriptum: After that last day in the garden at *Dove Cottage, I never saw my friend more. His brother reports that he has sunk, beneath the horizon of his family's awareness. Whether he be alive or dead, none can say. Thus does Fletcher Christian leave us with yet one more mystery that has no easy resolution.
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January 2006The Viking was in its customary state of somnolence ahead of the lunchtime rush. Instead of serving behind the bar, for once Jane was sitting at a corner table. She'd quit the Viking to spend more time working on the Wordsworth manuscript. Now that Jane was the custodian of the Bounty Bounty narrative, Professor Elliott had miraculously found enough money in her budget to retain her in a full-time position. narrative, Professor Elliott had miraculously found enough money in her budget to retain her in a full-time position.Jane glanced at her watch. She was ten minutes early, no need to fret yet. Harry brought her glass of white wine and sat down opposite her. 'It's not the same without you here,' he said. 'I'm thinking of looking for somewhere else.'To Jane's surprise, since Dan's death and the exposure of the full extent of his crimes, Harry seemed to crave her company. She'd expected him to blame her, to hold her responsible for seducing his partner from the straight and narrow, and ultimately for his death. But the opposite had happened. Harry cleaved to her because she was the only other person, he claimed, who really understood Dan in all his complexity. She had loved him enough to be his friend, but nobody knew better than her now how perfidious he could also be. 'You should think carefully about that,' Jane said. 'Anywhere else, you might actually have to work the hours they pay you for. No more leaning on the bar reading while you wait for customers.''Yeah, right. So, any news?' he asked.'Jenny's new bungalow's nearly done. She can't wait to get moved in. She's having the place decked out like a palace with all mod cons. She's even building a cat house for the felines. "Bugger the grandkids," she says. She's planning on spending the lot. And I spoke to Anthony yesterday. He thinks they're going to be able to raise the money to match the auction price and keep the manuscript in this country.''That's good, I hate to think of it ending up in some millionaire's collection in the States.''Oh, and Anthony passed on a juicy bit of gossip he picked up on the grapevine. Apparently Caroline has ditched Jake. Both professionally and personally.''Couldn't happen to a nicer bloke,' he said, looking cheerful for the first time that day. 'And how's Tenille?'Jane grinned. 'All very unofficial, but we're doing OK. It's a bit cramped, but I don't really mind giving up my study now that I've got a proper office at work. And she spends a couple of nights a week with her dad, so I do get time off for good behaviour. The best news is that she's actually going to school. Her dad's talking about trying to get her into a private school, and I think that might be the best answer. At least then she won't get the piss ripped out of her every time she hands in her homework.''And she's proved she's tough enough to handle anything those posh totties can hand out.'As he spoke, River Wilde dropped her satchel on the floor, put her glass of wine on the table and sat down. 'Nice to see you again, Jane.''You too. And this is my friend Harry,' Jane said, wondering anxiously whether River knew where Harry fitted in the jigsaw of the past months.'Pleased to meet you, Dr Wilde,' Harry said courteously, extending his hand. 'Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to work.''Is that...?' River asked as he walked away.'Yes,' Jane said.'Right. Just so's I know.' She leaned down and took a folder from her satchel. 'Pirate Peat. The mystery man.' She opened the folder and took out a bundle of papers.'The question: is the body in the bog Fletcher Christian, Bounty Bounty mutineer.' She glanced up at Jane. 'This has been bloody fascinating,' she said. 'Thank you for putting it my way. Now, the first thing I had to do was to gather as much information as I could about your man Fletcher and then compare it to what I had on the table. Did you get the tape I sent you?' she asked Jane, referring to a videotape of the session where River had outlined the first points of comparison for the camera. mutineer.' She glanced up at Jane. 'This has been bloody fascinating,' she said. 'Thank you for putting it my way. Now, the first thing I had to do was to gather as much information as I could about your man Fletcher and then compare it to what I had on the table. Did you get the tape I sent you?' she asked Jane, referring to a videotape of the session where River had outlined the first points of comparison for the camera.'Yes, it was really exciting to watch. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the final version.'River pulled a face. 'I look like such a moron,' she said. 'I had no idea how much time I spend with my mouth hanging open when I'm working. Anyway, you'll remember that from those early examinations there was nothing to contradict the possibility of this being Fletcher and quite a bit of supporting evidence. What I've got now are the results of the tests from the big boys' toys.' She pulled out a single sheet. 'The teeth. According to the cement annulation, our guy is the right sort of age. And the stable isotope analysis of the teeth tells us that he lived in Cumbria at the time his teeth were formed. So, like Fletcher, he was living here when he was around six, seven years old.''You can tell all that from teeth?''Yes. It's called science,' River said, her grin taking the sting out of her words. 'And then,' she continued, fishing out another sheet of paper, 'more stable isotope analysis, this time on the femur. And I can tell you that in the last fifteen years of his life, he had lived in the South Pacific' She grinned. 'Pretty cool, huh?''This is amazing. What about the DNA?''Patience, patience. I'm coming to that. Now, he had long hair, which is pretty useful for telling us about diet. And his hair indicates periods where he was eating a good, well-balanced diet rich in vitamins and minerals interspersed with a much less healthy diet. So, maybe a sailor who had some long spells on land where he was eating well, followed by long voyages with nothing much in the way of fruit or vegetables. Again, very suggestive.'Then there's that wound on the chest where the star tattoo would have been if it was your Fletcher. Remember I said when I did that first superficial examination that I thought the flesh and skin had been ripped out by an animal? Well, when I took a closer look, I realised I'd been mistaken. The skin had been hacked away by a serrated knife. So yes, we could be looking at a primitive version of permanent tattoo removal.'She put the papers to one side and steepled her fingers. 'There's not one piece of evidence that contradicts the theory that the man who was murdered in Carts Moss was Fletcher Christian. Balance of probabilities? Well, there were a lot of sailors around then. We'd just fought a war and also trade routes had opened up hugely in the eighteenth century. But if I was a betting woman, I would have put a few bob on Pirate Peat and Fletcher being one and the same. Apart from that inconvenient little thing about him being murdered on Pitcairn.''Which, according to the Bounty Bounty manuscript, was absolutely not what happened,' Jane said. manuscript, was absolutely not what happened,' Jane said.'Quite. Which leaves the DNA.' River stopped to take a sip of her wine. 'I really did have high hopes of this. So much so that I arranged right from the off to have some comparison samples from Fletcher's direct descendants sent from Pitcairn and New Zealand. Now, there's a big problem with bog bodies. The DNA in any bog body will be badly denatured because of its environment. The bog is acidicthat's why the bones tend to "melt" and the skin is essentially tanned. The acid in the peat denatures the double helix of the DNA strand and effectively strips the base pairs away. So DNA detector kits can see that DNA is there because they see the phosphate backbone, but it is no longer replicable because the base pairs have gone. And it is replication of the DNA through PCRthat's polymerase chain reaction to you and methat allows sufficient quantity to be duplicated to allow fingerprinting and therefore comparison. So although, if you're very lucky, you can get bits of DNA, you generally can't get enough to sequence it. And that makes comparison impossible. But I was hopeful with this body, I really was. We used every available technique. I even pulled some strings with a lab in Switzerland who are doing some stuff with DNA that is way out there.' River shook her head.'I'm really sorry, Jane. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't harvest enough DNA to make a comparison.''So we'll never know for sure?' Jane looked stricken.River nodded. 'We'll never know for sure.'
Bibliography
I consulted many works of reference in the preparation of this book. Notable among them were:The Bounty, Caroline Alexander (HarperCollins, 2003)Wordsworth, A Life in Letters, Juliet Barker (Viking Penguin, 2002)Captain Bligh: The Man and his Mutinies, Gavin Kennedy (Duckworth, 1989)Life and Death in Eden, Trevor Lummis (Phoenix, 2000)The Way of a Ship, Derek Lundy (Jonathan Cape, 2002)The Bounty Trilogy, Charles Nordoff & James Norman Hall (Back Bay Books, 1985)The Wake of the Bounty, C.S. Wilkinson (Cassell, 1953)The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals, Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. Pamela Woof (Oxford University Press, 2002)William Wordsworth: The Major Works, William Wordsworth (Oxford Paperbacks, 2000)
Acknowledgements
The seed for this book came from a talk Alan Hankinson gave some years ago to the Northern Chapter of the Crime Writers' Association. I am indebted to Reginald Hill for organising it and to Robert Barnard for filling in some of the gaps in the immediate aftermath. I was encouraged to continue by Wordsworth expert Juliet Barker. The late Robert Woof, Director of the Wordsworth Trust, gave generously of his time and encyclopaedic knowledge. Professor Sue Black provided invaluable information about the work of a forensic anthropologist and on the forensic details in the text. Any inaccuracies are entirely my responsibility. Thanks too to Cherry Cappel who steered me towards a title when I was becalmed. The book would never have been completed without the wholehearted support of my editor Julia Wisdom, my agent Jane Gregory and Anne O'Brien, the Jedi master of copy-editing. Finally, I want to thank Kelly Smith who made the dark places light.
About the Author
Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three years as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. Now a full-time writer, she divides her time between Cheshire and Northumberland.Her novels have won international acclaim and a number of prestigious awards, including the Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year, the Anthony Award for best novel, and the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year Award. Her thriller series featuring Dr Tony Hill, criminal profiler, has now been adapted for television under the generic title Wire in the Blood and stars Robson Green.For the latest news, visit www.valmcdermid.co.ukVisit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Acclaim for The Grave Tattoo The Grave Tattoo'Absorbing modern mystery...McDermid's mix of historical and literary clues with modern detection is handled with panache'The Times'One of the world's leading mystery writers, combining acuity of perception about the pathological mind with a rare talent for blindsiding the reader and graphic descriptive powers. Thomas Harris crossed with Agatha Christie, if you will...The Grave Tattoo is a great read. England's heritage history has never been so chilling' is a great read. England's heritage history has never been so chilling'Observer'McDermid has lion-hearted courage as a writer...the complex plot is handled with [her] usual narrative confidence'Independent'[A] cleverly plotted thriller...lost manuscripts, 200-year-old enigmas, an isolated Lake District village mystery and oodles of atmosphere: McDermid concocts a fascinating brew which is miles away from her customary bloody excursions into the realms of the perverse. It should gain her a crowd of new fans'Guardian'One of our most accomplished crime writers...compelling'Glasgow Herald'Cunning...gripping...so adroit in her pulling together of various items of historical conjecture and marrying them up to a murderous plot that has as many twists and turns as one of her Tony Hills...a substantially entertaining novel which grips the reader's interest from the first page until the final deeply satisfying sentence'Daily Express'Bodies pile upone with bizarre tattoosand trying to solve a 200-year-old mystery becomes increasingly lethal and readable'Daily Mirror'Safe for the squeamish...one of her best'Literary Review'An irresistible combination of contemporary psychological thriller and historical mystery filled with the moody atmosphere of the Lake District. And in Wordsworth scholar Jane Gresham, McDermid has created a character whose keen intellect matches her generous heart'Tess Gerritsen
Also by Val McDermidCleanskin The Distant Echo Killing the Shadows A Place of ExecutionTONY HILL NOVELS The Torment of Others The Last Temptation The Wire in the Blood The Mermaids SingingKATE BRANNIGAN NOVELS Star Struck Blue Genes Clean Break Crack Down Kick Back Dead BeatLINDSAY GORDON NOVELS Hostage to Murder Booked for Murder Union Jack Final Edition Common Murder Report for MurderNON-FICTION A Suitable Job for a Woman