by Peter Helton
‘Good effort, don’t you think?’ Paul said without taking his eye off the viewfinder. ‘Done with weedkiller, I expect. Not quite as popular as he was, our Mr Middleton. You should have heard him when he saw it; it was priceless. I think it’s quite a polite message, considering what a completely selfish bastard he is. I’d have written something more pithy and anatomical myself.’ He spoke to the pilot now and told him to fly a few gentle loops around the entire area. After a while I managed to relax a bit and began almost to enjoy myself. An aerial view really does give a different perspective. The Stone King’s realm was even larger than I had expected, though most of it was woodland lying to the north, bordered by enough brambles to start a jam-making business. The ornamental lake looked smaller from above and its island was revealed as no more than a dozen trees with a tiny clearing in the centre. Despite the large amount of people involved in the filming of the dig, from up here they looked thin on the ground. At the next flyover we could see Guy marching across the lawn, still gesticulating histrionically, the easily recognizable red-haired Emms following some ten paces behind. She stopped and looked up at us, then waved and pointed with an expansive gesture at the marching Guy. ‘I think she wants you down there,’ said Paul, ‘to pour oil on Guy’s waters. Personally, I’d use petrol.’
ELEVEN
By the time I got back to terra firma there was no sign of Guy. ‘Stomped off in a mega huff this time,’ Emms said, ‘and for once I don’t blame him. That was a very unkind message.’
‘Paul thought it was polite, considering.’
‘But at least we know now that the dart was meant for him, not Morgan.’
‘Possibly,’ I said. ‘Always assuming that whoever weedkilled the lawn is the same person who tried to dartkill the presenter. Could easily be someone else.’
Emms nodded. ‘True. Almost anyone, come to think of it; he doesn’t have many fans on the team. But none of it helps Time Lines and as much as I . . .’ She paused, hunting for a judicious word. ‘Disapprove of Mr Middleton’s style I wish this nonsense would stop.’ She folded her arms across her chest and looked out over the lawn from where we were standing on the terrace. ‘Look at it. It could all have been so bloody idyllic and for once even comfortable and luxurious.’
‘For some of you,’ I said, thinking of the sleeping bags drying on the line in the woods.
‘Yeah, I know, I’m a selfish cow. But most of them are young and they wouldn’t want to be doing anything else at this time of their lives, really. Can you smell something wonderful?’
‘That’ll be the rabbit stew. Not ready for a while yet.’
‘Right, back to work. Andrea will do the PTC from the helicopter. And she’ll do it beautifully,’ she said, smiling. ‘See what Guy is up to and try and hide his whisky bottle or something. Or alternatively just kick him up the behind, I’m past caring.’
I found Middleton in his room. He had worked himself into quite a state.
‘The bastards!’ Guy’s hands were shaking with rage but were steady enough to pour whisky. ‘It was meant for me; the ballista dart was meant for me. One of the bastards down there is trying to kill me.’ He was standing by the window of his room, looking out through the gap between the curtains, too agitated to sit down.
‘You’ve made enemies,’ I concluded.
‘I have always had enemies. This is different, I can feel it. Probably one of the people I’m looking at right now, but which one of them, which one, eh?’
‘Whoever burnt that message into the lawn isn’t necessarily the same person as the one who fired the dart. I wouldn’t take it as another threat; I think it’s just someone gloating.’
He turned around to face me. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘If I had shot at you I would write “Sorry I missed you”. Instead it says “Sorry it missed you”.’
‘You’re splitting hairs. And even if you’re right, am I supposed to be cheered by the thought that more than one bastard out there wishes me dead?’ He looked round the room, found his jacket and rummaged in the pockets. ‘Here.’ He held out a piece of crumpled and folded paper to me. ‘Here’s one person who doesn’t wish me dead. He’s trying to slowly bleed me dry.’
I took the note. It was written in capitals and blue biro on half a sheet of A4 printer paper.
THE USUAL AMOUNT
11 PM
WAIT ON THE LANDING STAGE
ALONE
Guy was right, of course; a blackmailer would not be trying to kill the goose that lays a ‘usual amount’ of golden eggs. ‘How much is the “usual amount”?’
Guy had turned his back on me again and resumed his place by the window. ‘Two grand.’
‘How long has it been going on?’
‘A couple of seasons.’
‘How often do you pay him?’
He shrugged. ‘Each shoot. And the price went up.’
‘You’re mad. He’ll never leave you alone. And the price will always go up. You’ll have to tell the police.’
Guy turned around and gave me a look of contempt. ‘Thanks for your brilliant and original advice, Chris. I can afford to pay him; I cannot afford to go public.’
‘What has he got on you?’
He looked away for a moment, then gave a curt shake of the head. ‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘I’m probably the only one you can safely tell. Client confidentiality,’ I lied.
‘You promise? It’s . . . it’s kind of embarrassing.’
‘You’re willing to pay a blackmailer until the end of your days to avoid embarrassment?’
‘I’m paying him to stay out of prison,’ he said impatiently. ‘It would be the end of my career, what’s left of it. I’ll have to keep on paying him or else find him and kill him.’
‘Steady on. Tell me what he’s got on you. Perhaps we can sort something out.’
Guy looked doubtfully at me, then went and recharged his glass. He avoided my eyes, shrugged deeper into his clothes, pinched his nose, sniffed. ‘He . . . he’s got photographs. Of me with a girl.’
‘So? Oh, I think I get it.’
‘We did a dig two autumns ago in Gloucestershire. She was from the local school; they came out to help with field walking. And later again washing the finds.’
‘She was under age?’
‘Chris, I swear I thought she was sixteen. She was nearly sixteen, a couple of months and she would have been.’
‘Even if she had been sixteen that could have spelled the end of your career if the papers wanted to make something of it. But if she was fifteen that’s statutory rape. “I thought she was sixteen, Your Honour” won’t cut any ice.’
He sat down heavily on the bed. ‘I know that. I know that now.’ He sighed.
‘And someone’s got pictures of you with this girl? How?’
He made a helpless hand gesture, palms upwards. ‘Must have followed us. By the river. She thought it was romantic . . .’
‘So what happened to the girl?’
‘Not sure. She kept writing to me for a while then it fizzled out. I think she found a real boyfriend.’
‘You’ve no idea who is blackmailing you?’
‘Not the foggiest. Someone on the production team, one of the diggers, could be anyone who owns a camera. I’ve suspected everyone in turn.’
‘The cameraman, Paul?’ I suggested.
‘Obvious choice, of course. But everyone round here takes pictures, videos, stills, for the production, for the archaeology, for their Facebook pages, for their mum and dad! It could be anyone connected with Time Lines and actually, Paul is the one person who never complains when I get things wrong or forget my lines.’
‘That’s probably because he sells the out-takes. How is the money handed over?’
‘Different ways. First time it was under a rock near the dig, once I had to leave it in a lift, once in a pub toilet.’
‘You’ve never been tempted to hang around and see who it is?’
‘I
tried once. I was spotted. That’s when the amount went up. As a punishment for trying. The vindictive bastard.’
‘What would you have done if you had found out who is behind it?’
‘I don’t know. Talked to them. Begged them? Thumped them? Hard to say.’
It sounded genuine to me. If you were being blackmailed by someone you worked with closely day in, day out you would be so consumed with curiosity as to who it was you might not think much beyond finding out. But that would soon change, I was certain. You would want to fight back. Unless you were completely spineless, of course. ‘Can you afford to pay? Have you got the money?’
‘All in tens and twenties.’ He puffed out his cheeks. ‘I’ve written cheques for some pretty big amounts in my life but two grand in notes somehow feels a lot more painful to give away.’
‘Yes, blackmailers don’t usually take cheques. And you don’t get much in return that you didn’t already have. Do you want me to follow you discreetly, see if I can spot who picks it up?’
He frowned at that. ‘If they find out they’ll up the money and I still won’t be able to go to the police. I’m not sure it’s a good idea.’
‘I’m pretty good at not being spotted.’ Often because I’m not there, I thought guiltily. Michael Dealey and his wheelchair were leaving narrow tyre marks on my conscience.
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘But let me know in good time.’ Since Guy wasn’t offering me any I found a glass and poured myself a measure of malt. ‘Are these incidents connected? Did they push the urn off the roof as a reminder or something? And your sweat lodge moment?’
‘I don’t think so. I’ve always paid up, haven’t I? That’s other people. Everyone’s after me. They’re trying to kill me for one reason or another.’
Guy was beginning to sound paranoid but I found it hard to blame him. ‘You’re saying it as though people don’t need much of a reason to kill.’
‘Do they?’
I took a breath to give him my ‘reasons for committing murder’, a short list that has Greed and Stupidity vying for top spot, but I didn’t want to give Guy ideas. If someone was really trying to bump him off he probably knew the reason, even if he wasn’t conscious of it. ‘Think about it, Guy. Who, in this group of people, did you cross enough to make them want to kill you? You must know.’
‘Look, Sherlock, don’t you think I’ve wracked my brains about it? Don’t you think I’d have said if I knew? I’ve thought of pretty much nothing else for months.’
I finished my drink and set the glass on the mantelpiece next to a vase of silk flowers. ‘Okay. Then perhaps you could give some thought to this: what kind of behaviour has brought you to a point where the only person you haven’t pissed off enough to feel murderous towards you is me? Yet. No one likes you much, Guy Middleton. You’re not giving people much reason to.’ I made for the door.
‘The public love me,’ he protested.
‘Of course.’
‘I get fan mail from all over the world!’ He was nearly shouting now as I left his room and closed the door behind me.
‘Because they never met you,’ I said to the empty gallery.
Downstairs I walked into the pool house to check on progress there. I found Annis on the right side of the pool staring at the empty wall with a mug of coffee in her hand and I found Stoneking on the opposite side of the pool, sitting in a cane armchair, watching Annis staring at the wall. I joined him first. ‘I’ve been banished,’ he said in a cathedral whisper. ‘This is as close as I’m allowed.’
‘I’m surprised she’s allowed you in at all.’
‘She’s been standing there for ages. Is she going to do some painting any time soon?’
‘Could be hours yet. Then she might explode all over that wall or she might put three dabs of pink on it and call it a day’s work. You’re not paying her by the hour, are you?’ I walked round the pool to check with Annis.
‘It’s got potential,’ she said.
‘Course it has, it’s a white wall.’
‘Perhaps it has too much potential. I mean where do you start? Over there? Or over there? How wide? How high? Long and narrow? Tall and wide? Where’s it going to end? I think I’ll need more coffee, hon.’
Nothing had changed there then. Back on the lawn the team had just waved the helicopter goodbye and another cooking sketch was being prepared. For this a few Roman soldiers were fetched to go about their business in the background, walking, chatting in pairs or carrying things to and fro while in the foreground Hilda Carson cooked and talked food. Hilda knew her stuff and could talk straight to camera without a script.
‘I won’t bother you with stuffed dormouse or similar delights. A lot has been said about the elaborate feasts that the Roman elite enjoyed, but even ordinary Romans, unless they were very poor indeed, enjoyed a diet far superior to that of the Britons at the time. Many of the ingredients we now take for granted and use regularly in our own cooking arrived with the Romans. Before the invasion we didn’t have parsley, spearmint, rosemary or sage, marjoram, thyme or watercress. The Romans brought with them apples and pears, medlars, mulberries, sweet chestnuts, damsons, plums and cherries and probably the walnut. And of course they brought their beloved grapes.’ She pointed to an earthenware dish laden with out-of-season plastic grapes. ‘Yet even more surprising is the long list of vegetables they introduced into this country, many of which we tend to think of as typically British: onions, leeks, cabbages and carrots, but also endives, globe artichokes, cucumbers, courgettes, asparagus, parsnips, turnips, radishes, celery and lettuce. Of course neither the potato nor the tomato would arrive in Europe for close to another fifteen hundred years, so you may well ask: what was British food like before the Romans arrived? The answer is of course . . .’
It was populist but interesting enough to keep me hanging around, though the sight of Hilda wrapping a huge salmon in chard leaves and heaving it on to the barbecue would on its own have been enough to keep me there. She was preparing several other dishes, stuffing herbs into offal, making flat breads and even a kind of fruity custard.
Many of the dishes, which sadly included the custard I had eyed with intent, contained large doses of that most Roman of ingredients: garum. In order to make it, take a large amount of mangled fish intestines – oily fish only, please – stick them in a big glass jar, pour over a couple of inches of salt and some herbs – as though that made much difference – add a dash of water and leave to fester in strong sunshine for a few months. If you drop the jar it will wipe half the value off your house faster than you can say negative equity.
The very thought of the stuff made me want to heave so I noted carefully which recipes were garum-free. Another two hours went by before all the dishes were ready and lined up in a photogenic display on the tables. I had fetched Annis from the pool to make sure she got more than coffee into her system; she had at last managed to get some paint on the wall, to the delight of Mark who came poodling after her at a respectful distance. Guy made an appearance too. He had been persuaded to stop sulking long enough to speak a few lines for the camera at the opening of the feast before the VIPs, which – off-camera – included Annis, me and Stoneking, started demolishing the display. What began as tentative sampling soon turned to serious scoffing; Hilda’s Roman cookery was exceptional. Even so I stuck to the garum-free rabbit stew, of which there was plenty, and the salmon wrapped in chard over which fierce battles were fought. Mark contributed a few bottles of wine and also sent a couple to the poor diggers. They had been excluded from the feast to keep the numbers down and would soon be queuing at the catering van for more conventional suppers as another session of the dig came to a close.
When the feast broke up the Romans, of whom only Brian had been invited to partake, began to pack up their camp in order to return to the twenty-first century. Annis went back to her mural while I took a stroll around Tarmford Hall in the evening light. When I came to the place where the urn had crashed to the ground
I saw that the extreme left door of the coach house stood open. I stuck my head around the door jamb. Then I stuck the rest of me around it as well. Immediately in front of me were the wooden stairs that led up to the floor above where the technicians had set up their computers. Down here the coach house was now a six-bay garage, four bays of which were occupied. As I had expected from an old-school rock star, there was a Rolls Royce; it was a blue 1980s model dripping with chrome. Next to it stood a racing-green Morgan, a two-seater convertible that had seen a lot of use and was covered in mud. The next car up was a Ford van – Sam the gardener’s, I decided – and the one closest to me was the tiniest Mercedes imaginable, which was probably what Carla the housekeeper used to get around.
I was just about to leave when from upstairs came a sound that made me stop in my tracks. It was the noise I had recently heard inside the helicopter, now played through a tinny loudspeaker. Then Guy’s voice as he started effing and blinding. ‘Look what the bastards did. Down there. There, you dickhead! There! In five-foot bloody letters! You can hardly miss it, can you? Pilot, go back, fly back, get us down there this instant!’
The recording stopped and there was laughter. ‘What a shame it won’t be broadcast, it’s my favourite bit,’ said one voice.
‘Whoever did that got his money’s worth, it was inspired,’ said another. I recognized the voices as belonging to the technicians who walked around joined at the hip.
‘Do you think they’ll ever catch whoever fired the bolt?’ said the first voice.
‘I doubt it, unless they left fingerprints on the apparatus. My money is still on Cy; why else would he have asked us to say he was chatting to us when the screaming started?’
‘Because he was wandering around by himself and would have been an obvious suspect? Everyone knows he hates Guy. And it’s obvious the bolt was meant for him. Want to watch it again?’