Alan stopped and looked down. He wasn’t very happy with what he saw. Perhaps, he thought, we might have machined a bit deep, but that rubble would have taken an age to have shifted by hand. And anyhow, you can often do more damage when tired and careless after working all day with a mattock, than with a machine. Paula, one of PFC’s most experienced diggers, had carefully removed all the remaining builders’ debris and had just trowelled a short distance into the underlying sub-soil to expose a clean surface. In the process she had come across fragments of very thin bone. At first, she told Alan, she thought they came from a burrowing animal, maybe a rat, fox or rabbit.
‘But then,’ she handed Alan a piece of bone, ‘I found this.’
Alan took it. One glance was enough. In his hand was a wafer thin skull bone of a very, very young baby.
Alan handed the tiny bone back to Paula, and knelt by the side of the trench. He looked down sadly at the pathetic little scraps that had once been a human being. Nobody likes digging the remains of young babies. It’s not just the emotion, the tragedy – although that enters into it – but they also present some formidable practical challenges. For a start, the bones are so tiny and very, very, fragile. They can easily be snapped, even when working with a toothpick and fine paintbrush. He stood up with a sigh. Paula was staring at the grave – for that’s what it had to be – with a serious expression. Alan thought he knew what was worrying her, but even so he asked:
‘What’s up?’
‘Horrible, isn’t it? Of course I’ll do it, but I’m not too keen on digging neonates…’
She used the slang technical term to avoid saying ‘babies’.
‘Yes,’ Alan agreed, knowing full well why she felt as she did, ‘Yes, they can be very tricky. I’ve always tried to steer clear of them myself.’
He paused, then doing his best to sound cheerful, suggested: ‘I know, let’s be decisive. It’s time for a cup of tea, but first I’ll give Harry a ring. We need her out here.’
‘D’you think she’ll dig…’ she was seeking the right word, ‘Dig…it?’
Alan felt the same: somehow ‘him’ or ‘her’ seemed inappropriate.
‘Yes, I’m sure she will. She likes to do the tricky stuff herself.’
Alan had started to pull the phone from his pocket, when they heard the now familiar creak of the churchyard gate behind them. They both looked up. Talk of the devil, he thought, as he pushed the phone back. Harriet had just arrived, together with her graduate student, Amy. Alan beckoned with his arm and they walked straight over.
Harriet stepped into the trench and bent down to examine the bones.
‘Hm, that’s a little bit unusual, but not unheard of.’
She was thinking aloud, but Alan needed to know.
‘Unusual? What’s unusual?’
He was impressed with her professional attitude. She was interested in the bones for what they could reveal about the site and she had the strength and experience not to let her emotions get in the way, unlike poor Paula.
She had started to excavate, but very, very carefully, using a dentist’s toothpick, which she drew from a roll of tools in her shoulder bag.
‘These bones have been constricted,’ she continued, half to herself, ‘they’re wrapped…no…they’ve been pushed into something. Maybe a bag?’
There was a pause while she investigated further. Then she looked up.
‘That’s not so common in most later Christian burials, where even young babies are properly laid-out. Of course medieval babies were always swaddled…’
She bent down again and continued working for a few minutes in silence, then Amy asked Alan in a quiet voice so as not to disturb Harriet, who was now working with a magnifying glass, very close to the ground, ‘But surely we’re just outside the graveyard. That’s the churchyard wall, isn’t it?’ She pointed to the low stone wall beneath which the contractors would insert the foul water pipe when the dig was finished. ‘Wouldn’t that explain why it’s bundled-up, too?’
‘Yes it would. At least I think it…’
Alan hesitated. Something was wrong. A thought had struck him. He turned round and headed back to the Land Rover, where he kept the maps and site plans.
Alan knew that in medieval, and as recently as Victorian times, the Church’s attitude to the burial of unbaptised children had sometimes been very harsh. Especially to bereaved parents. Sometimes the more humane priests and vicars would contrive to baptise a dead or dying child, even when still inside its mother’s womb, provided they could lay a finger on it and pronounce the magic words. This sounds extraordinary to modern ears, but without baptism, a child was not allowed to be buried in the holy ground of a graveyard.
From time to time contractors working close by churches still found little bundles of bones pressed up close to the stones of churchyard walls, as if hoping to catch a trace of Divine Grace, which might somehow manage to filter out through the stonework. In the past, people believed that without that Grace, which previous canny Popes had decreed only the Church could dispense, a child could never enter heaven. Far worse, without the Church’s blessing, a stillborn child could never be reunited with its parents in the afterlife. And in an age of faith, such denial of Grace would have been unimaginable mental cruelty. It was the ultimate moral blackmail and the Church had continued to profit from it for centuries… Alan took a deep breath. He had to suppress his anger.
He laid the plan of the churchyard out on the Land Rover’s bonnet. And then suddenly it struck him. He could have kicked himself. How could he have missed it? The sexton’s shed had been built along, and immediately inside, the line of the medieval wall. That meant that the Victorian wall, probably re-using stone from its medieval predecessor, had been built about five metres into the graveyard. He walked briskly towards the perimeter, at the point where the Victorian diversion rejoined the older line. He pulled away some ivy and brushed aside the dead leaves and roots. One glance was enough. The join was obvious: the new stonework and the harder mortar of the later masonry was clear to see.
He stood back for a moment, thinking about the implications of this. At first it seemed to explain everything. But did it? The more he turned it over in his mind, the more doubtful he became.
As Alan returned to the trench, Alistair came up to them with a tray of steaming mugs of tea. He had fitted into their small team as if he’d been working with them for years. Having successfully managed her escape from the dead baby, Paula had appointed herself tea lady and had dispatched Alistair who was plainly itching to see what had been found.
‘Presumably it’s medieval, buried just outside the churchyard?’
Alan smiled. Alistair knew his stuff. Who could blame him for making the same mistake as the rest of them?
‘Yes, Alistair,’ Alan replied thoughtfully, ‘it could be medieval, for all I know,’ he paused, ‘but it’s certainly not outside the churchyard…’ He broke off, frowning, then continued: ‘nor is the septic tank, come to that. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we don’t find a load of bodies when we clear the ground for that.’
He then produced the plan and explained about the diversion of the churchyard wall.
‘But why do it? Why bend the wall?’ Alistair asked.
‘Presumably,’ Alan replied ‘to allow the insertion of that rather grand sexton’s shed.’
‘That’s typical of my great-great-grandfather,’ Alistair said, smiling broadly, ‘if he’d put the shed over there, closer to the road and on unconsecrated ground, it would have been on estate land. And he wasn’t going to part with that for nothing, even to the Church, was he?’
Alan didn’t believe this for a moment, but he decided not to say anything. In his experience when someone suggested a simple motive, like miserliness, he was always suspicious. Any man prepared to build such a grand shed wouldn’t mind parting with a few square feet of ground
. It would all be part of his display of wealth. No, he thought, it didn’t add up. What ought to have been an obscure corner of a country churchyard was now starting to look interesting.
But he didn’t want to upset Alistair so he dodged the question – for now, at least.
‘Still, your distinguished ancestor did do Guthlic’s proud. I don’t think I’ve ever come across such a fine sexton’s shed in a parish church before. Certainly never seen one with a coat of arms above the door. That’s the sort of thing you find with abbeys or cathedrals. It’s very smart. Very smart indeed.’
‘Yes, AAC liked his coat of arms,’ Alistair added, ‘he used to put it everywhere. It’s terracotta, of course. Made in Stoke-on-Trent by a firm called Bearstows. The estate accounts show he bought two batches, amounting in all to half a gross.’
‘Seventy-two?’ Alan wasn’t quite certain how many were in a gross.
‘That’s right. He put them on all estate buildings: cottages, farm buildings. You name it. We’ve still got almost a dozen unused ones, up at the Hall. Each is individually numbered and marked with the maker’s stamp on the back …’
Their chat was suddenly interrupted by Harriet, who hadn’t stopped working on the bones.
‘Bloody hell,’ she said in a very audible whisper, ‘there’s another one.’ She looked up to Alan, as she spoke. As she moved her head he could distinctly see the pale hip, or was it the shoulder, bones of another infant, in the dark of the trench below her. He took a deep breath, but said nothing. There was nothing to say. He could see by Harriet’s look that she agreed with him. She resumed excavation.
Alan remained at the trench edge, deep in thought. A group of babies argued against a medieval date and their shallow burial suggested they were far more recent. And what about the diversion of the churchyard wall, how did that fit in? All his archaeological experience told him that there had to be a link. Maybe more facts might help him, but sometimes they had the opposite effect: they obscured. No, he knew in his heart of hearts that now was the time when things would be clearest. He leant against the wall and the clammy damp of the cold stonework against his legs gave him a sharp chill. He flinched. But when his thoughts resumed he discovered that he suddenly understood the connection between walls and bodies, bodies and walls… and family honour.
A Sense of Place II
Blackfen Prison
Thirteen
The next day Alan was driving back to Harriet’s across a frozen fen, on a cold winter’s afternoon. Even though it was barely mid-February, the sun, when it did manage to appear between rainclouds, had begun to acquire a little warmth. But not today, which had been dank and overcast. Bloody miserable. By rights, Alan ought to have been feeling optimistic. After all, the two babies were an unusual discovery: puzzling and unexpected. But there was something about them that he found profoundly unsettling. The way they were found, bundled into a bag. Behind this, there lurked another thought: had this also been Sofia’s fate, to be broken up and discarded?
He’d set his mobile to silent, as Brutus was too noisy to hear a ringtone anyway. And now it was vibrating in his shirt pocket. Rapidly he pulled into a field gateway and answered. It was DCI Lane. At last.
‘Hi Richard, I’ve been trying to get hold of you. We need to talk. It’s about Ali.’
‘Great minds and all that,’ replied Lane. ‘Norman Grant phoned me last night. They’ve been having security problems…’
Alan’s heart sank at these words.
‘Oh no, Richard,’ he broke in, ‘don’t tell me tomorrow’s cancelled.’
‘No, relax, Alan,’ Lane continued, ‘It’s just a heads up. It looks like our friend Ali might be smuggling mobile phones into the prison. No concrete proof as yet, but we’re looking into it at our end.’
Oh that old scam, Alan thought. But Ali, why was he doing it? He suspected it was about more than just making money.
‘I thought the authorities had said they were going to stamp it out?’
‘Supposedly yes, but there are ways and means. Anyhow, it would seem there’s a turf war inside Blackfen…’
The signal out in the Fens can be terrible and now the line was breaking up.
‘What, for control of the phone supply?’
‘Among the prisoners, yes. There’s also tension among the staff between outside security consultants, who are backed by the Governor, and the in-house people. So nobody seems to be talking to anybody.’
Alan had little time for internal politics, either from the inmates or the staff. He cut straight to the point.
‘So how will it all affect me?’
‘Indirectly, from what Grant said. They’re having to tighten up on everything. Especially on any opportunities for one-to-one communication between inmates and outsiders.’
‘In case phones get smuggled in?’
‘Yes, that’s the idea.’
‘So how on earth am I going to get to speak to Ali? I must see him face-to-face.’
‘I agree. I’ll see what strings I can pull.’
‘Great, thanks, Richard. But there’s something else…’
‘I’m sorry, Alan, this line is terrible. Let’s catch up tomorrow evening when you’re done.’
‘I’m not sure it can wait…’
As he spoke, Alan became aware that the line had died. He looked at the screen: no signal. Had Lane heard him? No telling.
And then the truth of the matter hit him. It was obvious, how could he have been so bloody stupid? If Ali was behind the mobile phone scam, he could easily communicate with the outside world. Ordering an arson attack was simply a matter of, quite literally, pressing a button.
* * *
Nine hours later, Alan was back on the road. He pulled wearily down on Brutus’s heavy steering wheel and drove into the prison car park for the second Lifers’ Club session. All the way across the South Holland fens he’d been trying to work out his options. Any sane person with a modicum of self-preservation would simply walk away. Scrap the entire course. He could easily pretend to Grant and Lane that Paul had read him the riot act about taking time off. Of course this would be a big white lie because, as ever, Alan had been at pains to insist to Paul, like all his other clients, that he would be working for PFC as a freelance. But Lane and Grant wouldn’t know that. At all events, he thought, it was an option, but one of last resort – a nuclear one. Before he took that drastic step he needed to see Ali again. He wouldn’t challenge him directly, he wasn’t that naïve, no matter what Lane might think. But he’d find a way of bringing up the subject of the fire and see how Ali reacted. That is, provided he was allowed to talk to him at all.
Once inside the prison, he was assigned an escort officer. On his previous visit, the officer had been friendly and they had chatted away amiably. But not this time. Now the man was taciturn. They also seemed to be taking a different route to the classroom used in the previous session. Maybe, Alan wondered, they’d been allocated a new place, because the A-level course audience was going to be smaller than the introductory slide show. He suggested this to his guide.
‘No, sir,’ he replied, ‘Administration have decided that we’re to be in a smaller facility. More secure. Better camera surveillance.’
This didn’t sound good. Alan was dubious:
‘But it is a proper… a proper classroom, is it?’
‘So they tell us, sir.’ This carried the implication that whatever ‘they’ told the staff was of little worth. He continued: ‘But it’s what we’ve been given.’
The conversation had ended.
After what seemed like an interminable trek through identical brightly lit corridors, they arrived at a classroom. Alan looked around him. It was a small space and the seating wasn’t raked, like for the previous session, neither were there any windows. It felt claustrophobic and airless. The acoustics were flat, too. It would be hard work addres
sing an audience here, even a small one. But what the hell. Resigned, Alan went over to the projector and plugged in his laptop, then stood back and waited for the class to enter.
This was going to be less of an ‘occasion’ than the first session, and normally this would have made Alan relax; but not now. In fact, it seemed to have a slightly different effect. He felt low. Lifeless.
A side door opened, and the Education Officer, who he now knew quite well after many phone calls, entered.
‘They’ll be here shortly, Alan.’
He stood beside Alan. They said nothing.
They stood there for what seemed like a quarter of an hour, but was probably nearer five minutes. Eventually the man beside him spoke in a low whisper.
‘Sorry about this…’
‘That’s all right.’
What else could he say?
‘It’s been odd. The place has been weird all day. There’s been a security flap. Something to do with illicit mobile phones. Education is based in Bedford, so we’ve only heard rumours, but when I set out this morning word had it that everyone here is brassed off.’
‘Seems odd,’ Alan replied under his breath, ‘surely phones and prisoners don’t mix, do they? Or are the officers taking a cut of the business?’
‘There may be some of that, although I’d be surprised if it were the officers. More likely part-time staff. Cleaners, kitchen assistants, that sort of person. No, the problem seems to have been the way they’ve handled it.’
‘What, the Governor?’
‘Yes, him – and the Administration. It’s common knowledge he’s not very popular with the staff. A bit heavy-handed. They say he talks down to them. La-di-da. You know how it is.’
The Lifers' Club Page 13