The Lifers' Club

by Francis Pryor

  ‘Sounds fascinating, Alan, but I don’t quite see how this is relevant.’

  ‘The Depot was being completely redesigned, rebuilt and modernised by the owners.’

  ‘The Kabuls?’

  ‘That’s right. And that’s what I need to talk to you about. ’

  There was a pause. Alan could visualise Lane, slowly passing his hand across his face, the way he did when he was weighing up his words before he spoke.

  ‘I wasn’t involved in that case. Not the sort of thing I normally deal with. We’ve officers with more specialist knowledge who deal with crimes like forced marriages and honour killings. If you have anything to report then I suggest you contact…’

  Alan cut in, he wouldn’t be shrugged aside, not until he’d said what he had to say.

  ‘It’s nothing specific. More of a hunch.’

  Alan thought, for a second, he could hear Lane swallow back a laugh.

  ‘Ah, the Alan Cadbury hunch. I remember it well.’

  There was a warmth to his voice, a softening. Less the formal police detective more the old friend whom he had knelt beside, in a cold, wet trench, both trowelling with fingerless gloves and frozen fingers.

  ‘The thing is, while we were digging we were visited by two teenagers, both Turkish-looking. Both bright and intelligent. Brother and sister, I’d guess. They were also about the right age, and I’m fairly sure the boy was called Ali – although it was seven years ago and I never got to see him after the dig. I didn’t find out the girl’s name, but she was wearing a green school uniform.’

  ‘That’s the High School.’

  ‘I’m sure I’d recognise her face if I saw it again. Very pretty. Her brother was good-looking too. Any chance you could get me pictures of them?’

  There was a pause before Lane replied.

  ‘I assume you have a good reason for all this?’

  Alan reflected for a moment. Best not to give too much away at this stage.

  ‘Yes, Richard, I think I do.’

  ‘I can download them tonight, but I’d rather not trust them to email. Better if I showed them to you here. I’m on duty tomorrow, so why not come over Sunday afternoon?’

  Alan had forgotten this about Lane. He took his time weighing up the evidence, working out the best course of action – but once he decided to act, that was it.

  ‘To your house?’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘Great, Richard, that’s really great. Thank you.’

  But Alan was speaking into empty air, Lane had already hung up.

  * * *

  Alan put the phone down and looked out of the window. It was only mid-August and already the nights were drawing in. Across the open fields he could see a man with a pitchfork get out of an old tractor parked alongside a reed-filled dyke. Then he climbed into the dyke, reaching into the back pocket of his overalls. Alan knew what was coming next, as he’d helped his dad do the same thing hundreds of times when he was a lad. As he expected the flames soon appeared, fanned by a light evening breeze, licking along the sides of a dyke as the dead reeds and rushes caught fire: an eerie vision in the half-light.

  Well, Alan thought as he folded up the newspaper article and put it back in his pocket, that could have gone worse. A lot worse.

  Three

  Alan was normally an early riser, but today he slept through to nearly nine o’clock. Still, he thought, it didn’t matter: it was Saturday. Late last night he’d phoned his brother Grahame and invited himself over to the farm for lunch. It’d been a while since they’d seen one another and Alan always liked returning to the place where they’d both grown up. Their parents had been tenants of Lincolnshire County Council and Grahame had taken the lease on as soon as he’d graduated from Nettlesham, the Agricultural College in Witham Fen just east of Lincoln. Then the horrible accident happened.

  Grahame blamed himself, but as Alan insisted, how could he have known what was going on, if Dad hadn’t told him?

  That was so typical of their old man, he just got on and did it. He was always fiercely independent. But this time he’d gone too far. He must have known he should have got help. It was always a two-man job: anything to do with baler repairs is dangerous. He knew that. They were constantly receiving farm safety leaflets from the Ministry and the NFU. Beware of balers. Always disconnect the PTO. Such a horrible way to go. Arm ripped off at the shoulder. Slowly. Blood everywhere. The two brothers had rushed to the screams. The air ambulance arrived, but too late. He died a thousand feet up, on his way to the Pilgrim Hospital at Boston. He’d always wanted to fly in a helicopter.

  Their father’s death brought the two brothers closer together. Alan was eighteen at the time and had just taken his A-levels. A few weeks previously the family had celebrated the news that he’d been accepted to read archaeology at Leicester. Grahame was about to graduate from college, but was then living on the farm, doing the practical element of his degree project. Together they supported their mother who, truth to tell, never really recovered from the shock. Anyhow, she withdrew from everything and there was nothing the brothers could do about it. They took her on outings and trips, anything to stimulate an interest in life. But nothing worked. Before their eyes she lost weight and in just six short years had passed away.

  During these difficult years the two brothers grew much closer together. Grahame had even suggested that the two of them should run the farm together. He had discussed it with their County Council landlords and they were happy with the idea, but in the end Alan’s instincts overrode what seemed, on paper, to be an excellent prospect, with a secure future. Laying aside the fact that he’d set his mind on archaeology, he also didn’t want to be tied down. He couldn’t bear the thought of being in the same place in ten, twenty, thirty, even fifty years’ time. His life stretching before him like a well-lit road. No, it didn’t appeal. Not even slightly. So he turned down Grahame’s generous offer – and in their heart-of-hearts they were both relieved. But Grahame never forgot: he knew what he owed Alan.

  Alan’s imagination was about to revisit that terrible scene in the barn for the umpteenth time when his alarm went off. It came as a release. Time to get going.

  After thirteen years as a professional field archaeologist Alan had developed a loathing for instant coffee. He hated the aftertaste and the headache it now always seemed to give him. So he filled his filter machine from a packet left over from the previous week. He smelled it. Lovely. Or was it? He thought he could detect a hint of diesel. That bloody stink – it was everywhere: the phone, his pyjamas, the stair carpet. And now the coffee. Still, he made a brew and drank it down black, as the milk in the fridge had gone off and he’d forgotten to get any more. No toast, but a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. As he munched his way through his makeshift breakfast, he was aware that something was niggling him. Blackfen Prison. Of course he knew the name only too well, as he’d been a young member of the team that cleared the site before construction began, and that must have been almost twenty years ago. But he’d also come across it quite recently – but where?

  He opened the kitchen drawer that served as his erratic filing system of unopened bills and junk mail. He burrowed down through the strata of the last six months. There it was. A letter from Blackfen Prison with the words ‘The Lifers’ Club’ emblazoned in big black type at the top of the page. It was an invitation, phrased slightly like a summons he thought, to come and speak to the inmates. He’d shrugged it off. But now… He folded the letter carefully and placed it at the top of the pile. One thing at a time, he told himself as he closed the drawer tight shut.

  His Land Rover was universally known as Brutus. He’d bought it at a farm sale ten years ago, where it had cost him just £150. It was a macho-looking beast, with a canvas top, very knobbly tyres and huge steel helicopter suspension loops at each corner. During its life in the Army, Brutus had been the tender vehi
cle for a Rapier wire-guided anti-tank missile. It had been equipped with a dual electrical system, one for the missile and another for the vehicle. There was a control panel immediately behind the front seats’ bulkhead, which Alan had removed, leaving a number of wires dangling free. He knew they were no longer live, but sometimes nervous people could be less convinced. Passengers were also made jittery by the fuelling arrangements, which consisted of two separate petrol tanks located directly under the front seats. To fill them you removed the bottom of the seat and undid a heavy-duty cap. Over the years Alan had grown used to the thought that he was driving around England sitting on top of two forty-gallon tanks of petrol.

  The Ministry of Defence, in their wisdom, had equipped Brutus with a twenty-four volt electrical system. This made it almost impossible to buy replacement fuses, which long-ago had standardised around twelve volts. So if a fuse blew, Alan would try to fix the problem and then replace the fuse with a stout piece of wire. As a consequence of this, the electrics heated up – sometimes smoked – which also made passengers nervous. So nervous in fact that a year ago his insurance broker insisted that the electrics be rewired at twelve volts.

  While this was being done, Alan also decided to have the petrol replaced by LPG gas, which the nice man who fitted it told him was both safer and cheaper. But there was a down-side. The only place where the gas tank could go was directly behind the seats, where the old Rapier missile control panel had once been. This made it rather up-front and visible; again, some of his more nervous regular passengers didn’t see this as much of an improvement. Even his mother, a sensible, pragmatic person, well used to dodgy agricultural machinery, simply refused to get in the vehicle at all.

  Alan backed Brutus out into the road and headed west, towards Crowland Fen. The wind was getting up and dark clouds were gathering above the level horizon. It was still sunny at Tubney and soon the cab started to heat up. Alan opened one of the vents above the dashboard and took a deep breath as the cool air rushed in. In the distance he could just begin to make out the higher ground around Bourne and Stamford. Over there was the A1, heavy traffic, the east coast main line and the outside world. Out here it was very different. No traffic. Just the odd tractor and a few heavy artics fetching loads of bulk grain from outlying barns.

  As he drove along the dead straight roads fringed with deep dykes on both sides, Alan found his eyes resting on those distant hills which were almost imperceptibly becoming better defined, less cloud-like and misty. Over there was England: Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Rutland. That’s where he’d been working back in February 2002. Flax Hole.

  He found his thoughts returning to Ali, as they’d done a hundred times since he saw that newspaper story. Why had the lad made such an impression on him? Maybe because he was a contrast to the other diggers who weren’t very inspiring. They’d landed the contract in late November and in those days the construction industry, and with it archaeology, was booming. Good, reliable and qualified staff were hard to find, but somehow he and Paul, his co-director, had managed to sub-contract half a dozen new Polish graduates from a large unit in Nottingham. The trouble was, they spoke poor English and tended to keep themselves to themselves. And of course the vodka, the ubiquitous vodka, didn’t help much, either. So the social side of the dig had been dire. A terrible atmosphere: them and us.

  Ali had been such a contrast to all this: bright, enthusiastic and with a genuine interest. Alan was suddenly hit by a visceral memory. He was back in the finds shed at Flax Hole. He had the finds laid out on the table in front of him, and was carefully piecing together the site sequence, object by object. Ali was transfixed. Alan handed him a Roman coin. Ali held it gently in his hand, as if he was scared he could shatter it with the slightest touch.

  ‘How did you know?’ asked Ali, quietly.

  ‘They’re quite common,’ replied Alan, misunderstanding, ‘when you’ve done a few digs, then you can easily recognise…’

  ‘No, I mean, how did you know this was what you wanted to do? As a job?’

  ‘Well, can you picture me in an office?’

  But Ali was staring at him, intent. Alan saw, in that moment, this was important.

  ‘I always loved old things. Museums, even as a kid. But after my first excavation… I just knew, I couldn’t do anything else.’

  ‘And your Dad didn’t mind?’

  ‘He could see it made me happy – so no, he didn’t mind.’

  ‘Even though you were never going to make any money from it?’

  Alan grinned at him and shrugged.

  ‘You never know, I might still find my pot of gold.’

  Ali shook his head and smiled. Alan could see that the lad was a pragmatist, he knew that would never happen.

  Alan took the coin and gently placed it back on the finds table. But what of Ali, would he ever find his own pot of gold?

  In that moment, Alan realised that for Ali, family expectation was everything. He could not choose his own way in life without their approval.

  He sighed heavily as the first ferocious gusts of a stiff thundery shower began to overwhelm Brutus’s feeble windscreen wipers. As he slowed right down he found he was wrestling with the thought that the Ali he remembered was the same Ali in that newspaper story. But he couldn’t accept it. It didn’t make sense.

  He pulled into a farm gate to let the shower pass. Ten minutes later, and Ali was still on his mind. Then the sun cut through and a 200-horsepower John Deere tractor with an immense disc harrow rig thundered by in the opposite direction. Together the sun and the tractor had managed to break into his thoughts. He took a deep breath and shook his head: no, even if Lane’s pictures were of the Ali he’d known, he couldn’t have done it. That was impossible. Absolutely impossible. He was more than convinced of that. And he also realised that it mattered to him, Alan Cadbury, personally. It wasn’t only about injustice, although that was important. In his heart-of-hearts he knew he had failed Ali once. And he was damned if he’d fail him again.

  * * *

  Crudens Farm was just over a mile outside the almost deserted eighteenth-century village of Hostland. Like many Fen hamlets it was built on either side of a single, dead straight road. None of the original houses survived because their foundations had long ago cracked and sunk as layers of peat buried deep below the surface had dried and shrunk; this was the result of land drainage, which became increasingly effective after the introduction of steam-driven pumps in the mid-nineteenth century. So the earliest buildings were two double-fronted houses with 1885 date stones, close by the now deserted non-conformist chapel. The other four buildings were probably built in the 1930s and then there were two semi-detached council houses at the same end as Cruden’s Farm. Grahame had bought one of them to house his two farm workers. Back in the 1970s there’d even been a small shop, but that had long since closed. The nearest pub was in Crowland, seven miles away.

  As Alan approached the village from the east he could see the great ruined tower of Crowland Abbey in the distance. He adored that mysterious, evocative building. It wasn’t a cliché to say that every stone told a story, because they did – even down to the reddened ones at the east end, burnt when Cromwell’s soldiers lit a bonfire during the Civil War.

  The Land Rover bucked as they crossed an old, steep-sided, ‘cock-up’ bridge which took the road across the West Level Main Drain. Alan looked down as he drove over. Nothing had changed. The two pill-boxes and the concrete base of a spigot mortar anti-tank weapon were still there. Grahame had always loved the wartime relics in the area and still made sure that local farmers looked after them. Alan smiled. For a moment he recalled his brother explaining earnestly how they had been built in November 1940, when everyone was expecting the Germans to invade. He was too young to know how to react to this, but could remember looking grave – which seemed to go down well.

  Another heavy shower was building in the west as Alan turned
into the yard. His brother must have seen him approaching, as he was out of the front door and walking across the yard when Alan pulled up near the back door. Like most Fen farmers Grahame and his family almost never used the front door, which was still reserved for special visitors, such as the vicar on his rare visits to beg money for one of his pet charities. Grahame explained that his wife Liz was away collecting their two kids from something athletic, healthy and open air in Wales. A few drops of rain were starting to fall, as Alan closed the back door behind them.

  Grahame produced two bottles of his home-brewed bitter from the larder. He knew it was a particular favourite of his brother. They sat down – no, flopped, as only brothers can do – into comfy chairs in the sitting room.

  For a few minutes neither brother spoke. They didn’t need to. Then Grahame released some of the wind he’d taken in with his beer.

  ‘It’s been too long, Alan.’

  Alan was only too aware of that.

  ‘I know. I’ve been on some amazing sites.’

  ‘That’s no excuse. It’s been almost a year.’

  ‘Yes…’

  Alan felt bad: Grahame was right, it wasn’t an excuse. Because there wasn’t one. Outside the storm had gathered pace. Lightning lit up the sky behind the ruined Abbey.

  ‘So, what’s up?’ Grahame asked.

  It was a quality that Alan had always admired in his brother: his failure to engage in pointless small talk. That, and his ability to read Alan like the proverbial book.

  Alan took a deep swig of his beer, and then began.

  ‘I don’t suppose you remember, I was on a dig in Leicester, back in 2002…’

  ‘What, that winter dig? Flax… Flax something, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Flax Hole.’

  ‘Didn’t you run it with that other chap?’