by Peter Helton
‘I think for Guy the falling urn is also part of it.’
‘I have already apologized like mad to him. But he’s not the most gracious man I’ve met. He has appalling manners. And, I mean, look who’s talking here – even I think he’s a pain in the arse and I’m not the politest man in the world. It’s a rock ‘n’ roll hangover.’
‘Do you rock ‘n’ roll much still?’
‘Me?’ He snorted. ‘I can’t stand rock music.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Straight up. Haven’t played any for twenty years, don’t listen to it. When I do listen to music these days it’s mainly classical. Twentieth-century stuff. But three blokes with guitars and a drummer? Give us a break.’
‘My girlfriend’s a Karmic fan; she’d be devastated to hear you say that.’
He wagged a finger. ‘Now, don’t go round telling everyone. I rely on the money from all those people who never grew up and are still buying Best of Karmic Fire CDs. No offence to your girlfriend, OK? It was all right, Karmic was all right. But that’s nearly forty bloody years ago. I don’t even think about it from one year to the next. I think of the guys sometimes but they’re all gone now.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘Why should you be? You never met them. And you might not have liked them much if you had.’
‘Do you still play the guitar?’
He held up his right hand for my inspection. It was an old man’s hand. ‘Arthritis in my finger joints. I haven’t played guitar for years. Getting a bit deaf in one ear, too. I’ve no idea why I’m telling you this. Let’s change the subject. Because . . . I have a little proposition. You’re a painter as well as a minder, Cy told me. So I looked your stuff up on the internet last night and I really like it. It’s got oomph. It’s nice and big, too. I love abstract art, see? The crap we had on the album covers? I always hated that shit, even then. So I have a proposition. I was going to soften you up with a bottle of wine first but since we’re talking I’ll come straight out with it. I want you to do a mural for me. In the same style of your paintings. In the pool house.’ Mark could read my expression and before I could open my mouth said: ‘I know, it’s probably not what you usually do and it’s not canvas but I’d give you a completely free hand. Whatever you come up with I’m sure it’ll look great.’
‘It’s not that . . .’
‘Look, you’re here already, standing around half the day, so you might as well. And I’d pay good money, have no fear. You can charge whatever you want, I mean, within reason, obviously.’
‘Mark, the paintings you saw. On the website. I’ve changed my style since then. Quite radically. I’ve gone figurative. And I’m still feeling my way.’
‘Oh.’
‘But I have an idea and I think you’re going to like it . . .’
A few minutes later Mark was studying the images on annisjordon.com on his phone. ‘Blimey. And are they big?’
‘Eight foot. But she’ll be delighted to paint larger than that.’
‘I really like these images. I like them even better than yours, no offence. And you think you could persuade her?’
‘I think I might.’
Mark flicked to the biography page. ‘Is that her? Pretty. I always had a weakness for red hair and freckles. How do you know her?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Would you ask her for me?’
I checked my watch – it was early here but the middle of the night in Annis Jordan’s world. ‘I’ll ask her later today.’
Despite yesterday’s thunderstorm the atmosphere remained close. It was warm already and the gardens steamed in the hazy sunshine. We ambled across to the enlarged trench where diggers were removing the khaki tent, marching it to the tree line at the very edge of the lawn. A small diesel generator was started up and connected to a pump.
Andrea, lowering the business end into the trench, turned to Mark. ‘It’s very muddy and we don’t have enough hose to get it all the way to the lake. It’ll make more mess of your lawn.’ She pulled an apologetic face. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’
‘Hell no, give my gardener some more to moan about but it’s only mud. Pump all you like.’
Mark and I retreated as the operation got under way. ‘Your gardener. Sam, was that his name?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, why?’
‘It was something the old lady said. She called him a villain, I think.’
‘That he is. Or was.’
‘He wouldn’t be taking his sabbatical at Her Majesty’s pleasure by any chance?’
Mark sighed and gave me a brief sideways glance as we kept walking in a loose, purposeless loop around the excavation. ‘Not for anything he’s done recently. He’s been pretty straight since he’s been working here. They actually taught him horticulture while he was inside for a few years, and he was doing some of his apprenticeship here with the then gardener as part of his parole afterwards. When I bought the place the old gardener retired. I kept Sam on as a replacement. Never regretted it.’
‘So why’s he inside now?’
‘It’s DNA, isn’t it? A robbery he never got fingered for back in the day, they could suddenly prove he’d been part of it. Not the big one, an earlier one.’
‘Big one?’
‘The Bristol Airport bullion robbery.’
I’d have whistled admiringly if I’d known how to whistle. ‘Oh, that. Very big.’ I remembered it well: twelve million pounds worth of gold bars, gone in four minutes.
‘He was part of that, he drove the van. Took his gloves off because he couldn’t get his chocolate bar unwrapped and left fingerprints on the steering wheel.’
‘Classic.’
‘Cost him four years. Most of the others got caught too, eventually.’
‘It was good of you to take him on. You didn’t think it was a bit of a risk?’
‘Not really. I don’t have any gold bullion lying about and you could tell he was really into this gardening thing. He’s pretty straight now. I get on with Sam. I know where he’s coming from. If it hadn’t been for Karmic I might easily have gone that way myself. I was quite wild back then.’
‘So I heard. When’s he coming out?’
‘This week if all goes to schedule. He’ll go mental when he sees all this. I’ll never hear the end of it.’ Mark smiled to himself as though he was very much looking forward to it.
The pumping of the trench continued for a long time. Paul was there to capture the effort on camera. His prediction came true: it was a whole hour before they reached the bottom and even then it was only to reveal a mud bath. The smaller trench had been bailed out by hand by Julie and Adam, both covered in mud but looking unperturbed.
Now Guy was there too, in his usual hat and jacket, doing PTCs or at least trying to. Loss of short-term memory is the bane of all heavy drinkers. He kept forgetting his lines or mixing them up. He faltered for the third time. ‘Sorry, can I have another look at the script?’
Cy threw up his hands. ‘For Christ’s sake, Guy, there’s only four bloody sentences in the sequence. Do you need an idiot board?’
‘Don’t swear at me,’ Guy protested. ‘Anyone can forget his lines once in a while.’
‘What do you mean, forget them? You never knew them in the first place.’ Cy, steaming with righteous anger, stomped a few yards away from the trench. ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent . . .’ He looked to the heavens in frustration.
‘Beast?’ Andrea supplied quietly.
If Guy had heard he didn’t let on. He studied the script and nodded. ‘Got it now. Definitely.’
‘OK, from the top,’ said the patient Emms.
Cy spotted me and marched over, pointing a rolled-up sheaf of papers at my nose. ‘This is your bloody fault. I asked you to keep him away from Morgan and his bunch. I think he’s actually still drunk. He hasn’t got a single functioning brain cell this morning.’
I tried to think of the money I owed Jake for the car, of the pool
and all that lovely free food, and took a deep breath. I spoke softly. He would just have to imagine the big stick for the moment. ‘If I hear “it’s your fault” one more time – from you, from him or anyone else in this TV circus – then I’m walking straight out of here back to civilization.’
‘We won’t pay you a penny if you walk out,’ he argued. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m not that desperate,’ I lied.
Cy deflated a little. ‘Just try a bit harder then,’ he grumbled and walked back to the shoot.
‘You can’t walk out of here,’ Stoneking said with a smile. Perhaps he recognized my bluff for what it was. ‘Not until you’ve got that girl to paint my mural, anyway.’
The auto mechanic was back, this time with a mate, trying to get the digger to work. From time to time the engine roared into life, belching out great clouds of white smoke, then it would subside and the head scratching continued. It was just before lunch when the engine was started again. No smoke this time. It sounded a lot better, too. Dan, the driver, downed his trowel and jogged across. He tested the drive, swing arm and bucket, then turned the engine off. From where I sat on the terrace I couldn’t hear what was being said but he seemed to be having a lively discussion with the two mechanics. When they had packed their gear and walked off Dan stood for a while by the side of the digger, staring into space. Then he walked back to the excav-ation just as the VIPs left for the catering van. I decided to wait for the second sitting and to call Annis. My mobile displayed one flickering bar so I asked Stoneking if he had a landline I could use. He had, and led me into a strange little room near the library. The single window above the solid dark wooden desk looked out over the gravelled forecourt with its collection of cars and vans. An assortment of furniture had been crammed into the room and every surface was cluttered with obscure objects to rival anything I’d seen in the library. Three-foot brass Buddhas rubbed shoulders with African masks. A moth-eaten stuffed fox bared its teeth at a Japanese pufferfish which someone had tastefully turned into a lantern. There were enough African spears and Arab daggers to arm a rebellion. ‘It was meant to be a sort of office,’ he explained. ‘But I don’t really need one so it turned into a kind of junk room / gun locker.’
‘You keep guns?’
He nodded at the gun locker behind the door. ‘With a place this size? You bet. Do you shoot?’
‘Reluctantly.’
‘You don’t fancy joining me in a little rabbit cull?’
‘And badly, I should have added. I’d just make more holes in your lawn.’
‘Who cares? We’re overrun with rabbits and I’m planning to shoot a dozen or so and feed them to you.’
‘OK, I’ll have a go, but I’m much better at cooking rabbits than killing them.’
‘You can cook rabbit? Excellent, you can help with the skinning afterwards.’
When will I learn to keep my mouth shut?
Annis picked up after an interminable time. ‘I was busy shooing sheep out of what used to be our herb garden,’ she explained. ‘They snaffled the lot, I’m afraid, all except the mint.’
‘I wonder why.’ I explained Stoneking’s pool house mural proposition. It didn’t need much arm-twisting to bring her round to the idea.
‘At last a decent-sized arena! And I get a free hand? He’s not going to say the colours need to match his bath towels? He won’t want swirly things that remind him of clouds or galaxies?’
‘He’s actually quite a cultured man, I think. He hasn’t displayed any rock star foibles at all.’
‘Whatever they are. A mural at Mark Stoneking’s mansion will look fabulous on my CV. And if he likes it perhaps he’ll recommend me to his mates.’
‘He hasn’t got any. They all died of drugs or liver failure.’
‘Shame. OK, tell him you talked me into it. Do I get to stay there?’
‘There’s a queen-sized bed in my room. I think we’ll manage.’
I was just in time to join the end of the foot soldiers’ lunch queue and scoop up a generous portion of steak and mushroom pie. I found Adam and Julie, who were eating on a still-damp table on the terrace. ‘What do you make of the latest development then, Mr Detective? I think you ought to spring into action right away.’
‘What development would that be?’
‘You haven’t heard? Sabotage.’ She widened her eyes as she pronounced the word.
‘Really? Where?’
‘Yup,’ confirmed Adam. ‘Apparently the digger was sabotaged. Someone poured water into the fuel tank, that’s what caused the smoke and all that.’
‘Naturally the suspicion will fall on us lot,’ Julie said, jabbing her fork into her pie for emphasis. ‘Everyone knows we don’t like using the digger. So of course it has to be us.’
‘Has anyone accused you?’ I asked.
‘Not yet. But we’ve been asked to assemble in half an hour for a general meeting. I can hear Cy already. He thinks we’re a bunch of dinosaurs. If it was up to him we’d probably be using dynamite as well as a JCB. I think he’s far more interested in producing per se than he is of producing an archaeology show. For a start he hasn’t got the patience for it. Or the vision, or whatever.’
Adam smiled. ‘He’s definitely run out of patience with Middleton. They’re constantly having rows these days. I mean, no one likes Middleton much, apart from the punters, of course, which is why he’s here. Cy always hated having to work with him but they’re having blazing rows now. It’ll end in fisticuffs, I’m sure.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ Julie said, dropping her cutlery on to her cleared plate. ‘I hope I’m there to see it.’
‘OK, who’s your money on?’ Adam asked. ‘Guy or Cy?’
Julie closed one eye as she gave it some thought. ‘It all depends on how drunk Guy is at the time,’ she decided. ‘Guy will put up his fists but Cy will already have paid someone to stab him in the back before he can land a punch.’
Adam nodded wisely. ‘Admirably analysed. I concur.’
Soon afterwards Cy assembled his troops on the verandah. It was quite blustery today and after the urn had so nearly – and unfortunately as some would have it – missed the presenter of the show some of the diggers argued that standing around right by the house might not be the safest place. Cy called it a ‘load of nonsense’ and could they please get on with things?
I was standing among the group of diggers. Behind me, Adam said, sotto voce: ‘I can’t see Guy anywhere. If I were Cy I wouldn’t feel too safe standing there. If Guy appears on the roof and puts his shoulder to one of those urn things no one’s going to mention it to Cy, I’m sure.’
‘Right, listen up!’ Cy clapped his hands for attention. ‘I’m sure you’ve all heard by now – the digger was in fact sabotaged. Someone poured water into the fuel tank, that’s what put it out of action. Fortunately no lasting damage was done, because while the thing’s insured I don’t think it’s covered for water damage. Now, I know some people disagree with the use of the digger but to them I say: you don’t live in the real world. Grow up, guys. This is telly; time is money; schedules are tight. If it wasn’t for the digger we wouldn’t have a programme. And if it wasn’t for the programme, most of you field archaeologists would be signing on, so think again. I take a dim view of anyone trying to interfere with the shoot. If I find out who did that they’re off the team for good. Fired without pay. Someone also tried to nobble Guy by locking him in the steam room. Now Mr Middleton really doesn’t need any help; he’s quite capable of sabotaging himself. If whoever did that meant it as a practical joke then look around, no one’s laughing.’ Someone called ‘Ha!’ but Cy ignored it. ‘The same goes for the re-enactors.’ He turned towards the two groups standing at the periphery of the circle. ‘We worked quite well together in the past but yesterday was nothing short of a fiasco. Any repeat of that kind of thing and you won’t be asked again. As it is, we’ll have to re-shoot some scenes today and then catch up with the weapons demonstration etce
tera. We’ll do the Roman food cameo tomorrow but I’ll talk to you about all that in a minute. OK, everyone, that’s all I have to say on the subject apart from this: I have my suspicions as to who’s responsible and I’ll be keeping an eye on them. That’s all. Brian? Morgan? A word.’ Cy walked off with the leaders of the re-enactment groups to reveal the schedule for the afternoon. Everyone else went back to work.
So much rain had fallen on to the lawn that no sooner had the pump cleared the water than it seeped back into the trench, collecting in puddles on the bottom. But difficulties made good telly, according to Emms, as long as they didn’t interfere with the schedule. The digger went back into action. More and more of the mosaic was being uncovered and the excitement began to rub off on me. It looked nothing short of miraculous. There was discussion now about more trenches being opened and soon it would be time for Guy to sound surprised, delighted or sceptical, depending on what the script required.
Cy called me over. ‘Chris? Find Guy for us? I can’t get his mobile. We’ll need him in ten minutes. Erm . . . please?’ he added.
I could now add production team runner to my CV but please made all the difference. ‘And tell him to bloody well turn his mobile on, for God’s sake!’
Double rates, keep thinking double rates, I told myself as I jogged back to the house. Ten minutes? The place was so big I would have to hurry to get Guy to the shoot on time. No luck in drawing or dining room. I took the stairs up from the central gallery and knocked on Guy’s door. When I got no answer I went in, looked in the bathroom – nothing. I clattered back down the stairs. Had he gone swimming? The pool house was deserted, echoing emptily as I called Guy’s name. Five minutes gone. Back through the gallery and into the hall. I was beginning to feel uneasy when I called his name again in the huge hall, the sound reverberating unanswered in the cavernous space. Perhaps I should have kept a closer eye on him. I stepped into the library; it was empty apart from the stuffed, spiked and bottled residents. The little glass-topped display case near the window had its lid raised. Despite being in a hurry, curiosity got the better of me and I went over to look inside. Every object I remembered appeared to be there and the display of knives and beetles had no obvious gaps. Then I saw it. The ghost bottle resting on the prayer book was empty, the stopper with the broken seal lying next to it. That’s all I needed, something else to scare Middleton. I stoppered the bottle and lowered the lid of the case.