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Holloway glances across at the screen. ‘Jesus, haven’t these people got anything better to do?’
Bradley sighs. ‘Apparently not. Just as well they don’t know about the tattoo. We’ll be mown down by bat shit if that gets out. That three-pronged thing, it’s called a “triquetra”, and it’s used not just in Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism, but – wait for it – in Wicca. That’s paganism to you, Holloway.’
He shakes his head and mutters, ‘Fucking hell. So what’s it supposed to mean, then?’
‘You’ll like this – according to the handy website witchandwicca.com, it symbolizes the three incarnations of the Earth Goddess, i.e., Maiden, Mother and Crone.’
He looks across. ‘Crone as in that bloody tree?’
She nods. ‘The very same.’
‘Fucking marvellous.’
‘Yup, I think that just about sums it up.’
The lights change and Holloway puts the car in gear.
‘On the plus side,’ says Bradley, ‘it’s also called a Celtic knot and a lot of Irish people have it.’
‘So either this woman is some off-the-charts weirdo or –’
‘– she’s plain old Bronagh O’Shea from Donegal and just likes the design. And the whole Crone Oak thing is a complete fluke.’
‘Yeah, right,’ says Holloway darkly. ‘What are the odds we’d be that lucky?’
***
***
‘So that’s where we are, sir.’
Larry Kearney sits back in his chair, the leather creaking under his weight. He’s a big man, with thick grey hair, a dark moustache and intense blue eyes. Eyes which are currently fixed on Tate.
‘So what’s all this witchcraft crap coming out of the woodwork, Marce? You know I don’t like surprises.’
She counts to ten. No one –no one– calls her Marce, except Kearney. Who apart from everything else knows damn well she pronounces her name ‘Marsha’. It pisses her off, and she wonders, not for the first time, if he does it precisely for that reason.
‘I accept that it’s unfortunate, sir. But to be fair, we had no way of knowing of the specific issues with that location.’
‘It’s on bloody Wikipedia, so it’s not exactly top secret, now is it.’
‘As I said –’
‘How many have you got on that team of yours? And not one of them thought to shove the word “Hescombe” into Google? Evenafterwe had to field all that druid crap about the Rollrights? And yet here we are, up to our arsesagainin New Age woo-woo. Not to mention this fucking scold’s bridle shelf-bracket thing or whatever the hell it is –’
‘We don’t know there’s any link between the bracket and a scold’s bridle, sir –’
‘Well, it’s a pretty fucking weird thing to do to a corpse otherwise,’ he snaps. He gives her a dark look. ‘You’d better make surethatdoesn’t find its way into the bloody press or it’ll be you being ducked in sodding Hescombe Mere.’
She bites her lip. Kearney isn’t usually such a misogynist bastard and calling him out for it now is only going to make matters worse. As is trying to hand off the blame. Her team, her fuck-up. She just has to suck up the punishment and content herself with reallocating it later, several times magnified.
The chair is creaking again as Kearney massages his moustache. She turns and looks out of the window; the grass round the station has a yellowish tinge already. The weather is in a brown funk.
He sits back, the chair rocking. ‘So what next? Given we now know it’s not Ellie Harben. Is it too much to hope you might actually have some sort of plan?’
‘Well, the only upside of all the press coverage is the possibility of someone coming forward. And if we get an ID –’
‘No likely matches in MissPers? Not even with the tattoo?’