CHAPTER ONE:

By Grace of a Coin Toss

JANUARY 10th, 2012…

The crisp mountain air swept down from the nearby peaks in unforgiving gusts that firmly reminded Anna McLaren that winter had yet to leave Wales. As she catalogued various discovered items in her notebook, she wondered why she was subjecting herself to these miserable conditions when this archaeological dig she had volunteered for had turned out not to be one at all. The Welsh officials had decided to alter the route of a nearby mountain road after falling scree and larger rockslides had caused several traffic accidents, which culminated in the deaths of a family of four the previous month. Several experts had been called in to first examine anything uncovered along the new road's planned path, and Anna had been stupid enough to offer her services.

The plan had been that this minor expedition would take her away from her dreary, dead-end job in Edinburgh, from her empty home full of bitter memories, and out of reach of her spiteful ex-husband. Well, she'd exchanged all that for a dud of a dig site, miserable weather, and overeager colleagues who she had to watch have more fun than she did. Sally Andrews and Ronan O' Connell were both palaeontologists, both of whom had forgotten to inform her that the sediment layer they would be examining was over one hundred and fifty thousand years old. Since at that point anatomically modern humans hadn't technically evolved yet or left Africa for that matter, there wasn't a whole lot of archaeology to do. Her best find so far had been a copper coin from the 19th century, which she'd rooted out of the piles of dirt already excavated from the site by the JCBs. Sally and Ronan, on the other hand, were finding fossilised remains of bears, snow lions, mammoths, woolly rhinos and other ice age animals that used to roam across Britain at the time.

With a sigh, she plopped down upon an unopened, plastic equipment box and took in her surroundings. The mountains were just to the east, austere with their covering of powdery snow. The original road lay in a valley between the base of the mountains, and the small hill upon the western side of which the new road would be constructed. A steely sky threatened to add sleet and snow to the misery of this already bitter day as the winds grew ever stronger. Anna shuddered and clenched her fists tight. Her fingers were numb despite her thick gloves, and her ears and nose were so cold that they hurt.

She wondered what she had done to deserve this gross miscarriage of justice that was laughably called her life. Her husband, Aidin, who was a criminal defence attorney, had been a royal jackass and a total chauvinist. He disapproved of her career constantly, believing she belonged in the home, doing laundry and making his dinner for him. When his initial attempts to "persuade" her to quit her job failed, he resorted to degradation. At first it was verbal, poking fun at her education choices, making out that her degree was about as useful as one in philosophy, despite the fact that she raked in a sizeable wage from a very prestigious lecturing post in Edinburgh University. Then, if it was not her work, it was her interests, her neediness, or her appearance. Eventually, he refused to allow her to handle bills or mortgage payments, and decided she could not go anywhere but work alone. She tolerated this because she was blinded by her love for the man, but the man she loved and the man she married were too different people entirely. She could never have imagined six years ago that her kind, loving fiancé would turn out to be such an abusive husband. Unfortunately, she couldn't let go of the hope that someday he might become that perfect guy she'd said yes to once again.

The last straw came when he started to get physical with her. It started with shoving and grabbing when they would have an argument. Before long, he saw fit to slap her or push her to the ground whenever she raised her voice even a little to him. She left him for a month at that point, returning to her parents in Glasgow. She told them nothing of why she was staying. She still cared enough about him not to tell her overprotective father or her three older brothers that her husband had been knocking her about. It was when he came to Glasgow pleading with her to come home and that he could change that she relented. So, she came home and was greeted with a kitchen littered with rose petals and a candlelit dinner upon the table. He morphed into a complete gentleman, pulling out her seat and pouring her wine. They spoke as they would when they were engaged, joking, laughing, declaring their love for each other. It was amazing how alien the words "I love you" had become to her. By the early hours of the morning, she'd become quite tipsy, even though she didn't think she'd drank that much. Aidin had to help her to their bedroom, which was also covered in rose petals. He lay her gently upon the bed and began to kiss and caress her. She wanted him to make love to her and let him undress her. She found herself becoming woozier, but was pretty sure that Aidin was not exactly making love to her. He was being very rough and forceful, enough that it hurt through her dulled senses. He then picked her up and threw her across the bed on her stomach. She faced away from him towards the television with him pressing down on her back with one hand and pulling her head back by her hair with the other.

It was then that the television flicked on.

She didn't understand. From the sounds, she knew it was some sort of pornography but as her vision clarified, she saw what it really was. It was a video of Aidin having sex with another woman in their own bed. She whimpered and closed her eyes, but she couldn't block out the sound. It was then that Aidin said, "That's right, sweetheart. I banged another bitch like you right here. Don't read into it too much, though. I loved her as much as I loved the other twenty broads I did while you were gone, as much as I love you. How dare you leave me. You are mine to do with as I please. You should realise now how replaceable you are. By the way, I slipped you a little something so you won't be resisting too much 'cause I intend to punish you thoroughly."

She cried through the whole ordeal, which seemed endless to her. The next morning, she awoke with bruises, cuts, and a dislocated shoulder. Aidin wasn't there. He left a note on the bed telling her that he'd gone to work and that if she wasn't there when he got back, the previous night would seem pleasant compared to what he'd do to her next. He probably believed he'd beaten the fight out of her, that now she'd be the docile, compliant wife that he wanted.

About five seconds passed between her finishing the note and dialling 999.

She was hospitalised and had to suffer the indignity of a rape kit and several blood tests. For a man who practiced law, Aidin hadn't covered his tracks very well. His overconfidence in how well he'd degraded Anna had led him to not use protection, write a threatening note in his own neat script, and not dispose of the unused sedatives that he'd used on her. When he was arrested in his own workplace, she thought she'd gotten her revenge, until on his hearing she found that the judge was a close friend of his. He decided to set bail at seventy-five thousand pounds, which was as low as he could go given the strength of the evidence. Aidin, it turned out, had kept much of his savings secret from her in separate bank accounts and so could easily afford to make bail. The fact that the judge neglected to issue a restraining order meant he could return to their home, which he tried to do that same evening. He turned tail and ran when he saw Anna's father and three burly brothers waiting for him on the doorstep. Since then, one of them had stayed with her at all times. Relative safety during the trial did nothing to keep her afloat though.

The drawn out judicial proceedings took their toll. She thought what finally made her crack was that Aidin decided to represent himself when the time came for her to take the stand. Her family protested, and the judge had her father removed. She was in shock and teetering on the brink, which Aidin took advantage of. However, after his savage cross-examination in which he made her relive every detail, the judge seemed to realise his mistake in giving his friend an easy time. He signed off on a restraining order and had him fitted with an ankle monitor until the jury handed down their verdict. In the meantime, she tried to return to work. She'd been scheduled to examine a Roman site in Kent before the assault and decided that the time away and the distance might do her some good. Her colleagues didn't agree, feeling she wasn't ready to be put straight back in the field, but she knew their concern was more for the sensitivity of the site than for her.

It turned out their concerns were justified in that regard.

Whilst trying to remove two almost completely intact vases that were covered in intricate designs, she damaged them, leaving one in fragments after she slipped and drove her chisel through it. The site leader ordered her home, saying she was too jittery and preoccupied for such delicate work.

Depression gripped her there on out. The jury were still deliberating weeks after the defence and prosecution had rested their cases. While she waited, she had nothing to do but lounge about at home, as the head of the School of Archaeology in Edinburgh, Donald McLachlan, decided she needed time to recuperate. The fact was that what she really needed was a distraction. So she kept in touch with her students, and she graded some papers, but none of that was good enough. She soon found herself sitting, watching television programmes she had no interest in with only a bottle of red wine for company. That was soon upgraded to vodka or whiskey when her family members had to return to Glasgow. Her brothers each had families of their own and they had put their lives totally on hold for her. Her father was still working, and his employers weren't willing to give him anymore time off. Her mother didn't drive, so she could only visit once a week on the bus. She was beginning to feel isolated from the world and became so aloof that she forgot basics like groceries, housework, and personal hygiene.

It was two months before the jury decided upon a verdict.

Save for her mother, she was alone in the stands when the guilty verdict was handed down. Aidin seemed smug and even smiled at her, so she knew he would appeal, and this would not be over. That was a week previous, and now she had to wait for the sentencing hearing and after that the appeal.

So she stayed seated upon the uncomfortable toolbox, her strawberry blonde hair whipping about her face in the breeze as a slowly freezing tear crawled down her cheek from her tired, green eyes. She considered leaving right there and then and leant forward as if to stand. She knew she'd been allowed on this trip because there was nothing she could damage on this site but animal bones. As she leaned forward, she felt something solid in her left, jacket pocket. She reached in and retrieved the greening copper coin that she'd found earlier. She examined it, turning it in her fingers. It was an 1859 copper farthing with Queen Victoria's bust facing left on one side with the legend Victoria Dei Gratia (Victoria by the Grace of God). The reverse side had the seated Britannia holding a shield and trident, but the legend had faded. She decided to flip the coin to decide whether or not she should stay.

So, heads – Victoria – I stay, tails – Britannia – I go.

So, placing it on the end of her thumb and her index finger, she flipped the little coin. However, she fumbled it, and the little farthing rolled away from her down the gentle slope. She didn't know why she chased after the almost worthless piece of copper, but she did and caught up with it as it lost its momentum in some loose, sandy sediment. She scooped it up in her hands, taking up a handful of silt along with it. She attempted to pick it out of the dirt, but could not retrieve it. In the end, she let all the material fall to the ground, but there was no coin amongst it. She checked the surrounding area again to make sure she wasn't losing her mind, but she found nothing. She had been so certain that she'd caught it. She noticed that all the sediment on this side of the hill had also been disturbed by the activities of the construction crews but not to the same extent as the side that had actually been excavated. She decided to take the loss of the coin as a tails and leave when something caught her eye. Where she had disturbed the earth in her desperate bid to apprehend the escaped coin, she saw something solid was poking out of the coarse sediment. At first she thought it might be just a pebble, but crouching down and brushing away more of the sediment, it was clear what it was.

A human hand?