by Nicola Ford
‘He wanted more?’ Sally thought back to their conversation with George Clifford. ‘Was Jim blackmailing Gerald about his affair with Peggy Grafton?’
Ed snorted. ‘That frigid little—’ He stopped short, seeming to think better of whatever he was going to say. ‘Peggy Grafton wasn’t having an affair with Gerald, or with anyone else for that matter.’
‘But Jim was intending to squeeze his brother for more money.’
‘Not so much squeeze as take. Jim was planning to steal the gold from the excavations.’
West asked, ‘How did you find out?’
Ed returned to his seat. He placed his elbows on the arms of the chair, resting his chin on his steepled hands. He seemed to be trying to make his mind up about something. West looked at Sally questioningly. She lifted her hand slightly in response and gave the merest suggestion of a shake of her head. West blinked his understanding.
After what seemed like an age, Ed clasped his hands together and dropped them into his lap. ‘Jim offered to cut me in on the deal – to shut me up.’
‘To shut you up?’ Sally’s tone brightened. Now they were getting somewhere.
‘I overheard him talking about it.’
‘Who to?’ Sally asked.
Ed shrugged. ‘They were outside the pub – it was dark.’
‘Did you accept?’ Sally asked.
‘I played along. I wanted to get proof of what Jim was planning to take to Gerald. So I needed to convince Jim I was serious. Gerald didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him. But Jim knew Gerald trusted me. So he asked me to find out what Gerald’s security arrangements were.’
She allowed herself a smile. She couldn’t condone Ed’s behaviour, but she was beginning to see how his mind worked. ‘Is that why you followed Gerald up to the dig site?’
Ed nodded. ‘I knew I might never get another chance to do something about Jim. But, if I played along with him, I could make sure I had enough on the bastard that he couldn’t wheedle his way out of it.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The party of Americans who passed through Hungerbourne that morning on their B-road tour to Avebury and Stonehenge could have been forgiven for thinking they’d arrived in November rather than August. It had started to rain mid-morning and hadn’t stopped. By lunchtime, most of the roads that ran along the valley bottoms on the Downs were impassable by anything other than a four-wheel drive. The Hungerbourne, which had been trickling for weeks, had turned into a torrent. Bubbling down the narrow coomb that ran past the barrow cemetery, it disappeared into a culvert beneath the village high street only to reappear on the far side of the manor.
They’d tried sitting it out in the huts up on-site to see if the weather would improve. But by lunchtime it was obvious, even to David, that trying to carry on digging would wreck more archaeology than it revealed. So he’d called them all off-site to let everyone try to dry out.
David, Clare, Margaret and Jo were sitting around a trestle table in the mess tent, taking solace from four mugs of steaming coffee. Margaret produced a small hip flask from the pocket of her cardigan and proffered it to the assembled company.
Only David accepted, pouring a generous slurp into his chipped Bath Rugby mug. ‘What are we going to do for the rest of the day? There must be something productive we can get this lot to do.’ He nodded in the direction of the bedraggled collection of students behind him. They were hanging an assortment of sodden clothing and sleeping bags over wooden benches that were ranged around an old Calor gas heater that Tony had unearthed from his garage.
Clare warmed her hands around her mug. ‘They’ve had enough, David. Trying to work in this is no joke and they’re not used to it. They’re whacked.’
Margaret said, ‘Why not give them the afternoon off? Let them get the bus into Marlborough. It might cheer them up to have some free time.’
David grimaced. ‘If this weather keeps up, we won’t be finished when the machines come in to start backfilling. We should at least get them to wash some of the finds.’
Margaret said, ‘Go easy on them, David – losing Jenny like that has been really rough on them.’
‘It’s been rough on all of us, but we can’t afford to lose any more time. I’ve already got British Heritage on my back over the newspaper articles. They’ve hauled me in for a meeting in Swindon this afternoon.’
Jenny’s death had made the nationals. When the press had come sniffing, some of the locals had been only too willing to spout rubbish about the legend of the Woe Waters. And things had only got worse when someone – he suspected one of the students – had told them about the graffiti on the site hut. So before he or anyone else could do anything to stop it, one unfortunate young woman’s suicide had morphed into the ancient burial ground with the killer curse. King Tut’s tomb, it seemed, had nothing on the Hungerbourne dig site.
David knew there was every chance that British Heritage had called the meeting to tell him they were pulling the plug on his funding. Clare and Jo would lose their jobs and the Runt would take great pleasure in ensuring his name was top of the list when the next round of departmental redundancies hit. But worst of all was what this must be doing to Jenny’s parents. God only knows what they must be going through. It was bad enough losing your only daughter like that without being hounded by a pack of muck-raking journos.
Clare said, ‘The finds will never dry out in this weather. The pottery will turn to mush.’
Margaret peered over the top of her spectacles. ‘She’s right. And you’re not going to help matters by making this lot even more miserable than they already are.’
He knew he should be the one trying to keep their spirits up – to keep the team positive. But despite his best efforts, he couldn’t find anything about the current situation to be positive about.
‘I know,’ he conceded.
‘Why don’t you give them the rest of the day off and ask for a few volunteers to help sort out the plans?’ suggested Jo.
Margaret pushed her spectacles back towards her brow from the end of her nose and smiled. ‘Wise words from the colonies – a rare thing.’
Jo grinned.
For an instant, David felt the briefest flicker of relief. ‘Everyone agreed?’ They all nodded and he slapped the flat of his hand down on the rough wooden surface of the table. ‘Settled.’
Clare said, ‘There’s a flaw in the scheme.’ The others turned and looked at her. ‘Most of the plans are in the office up on-site.’
‘No problem,’ Jo said. ‘David and I can go collect them in the Land Rover.’
David glanced down at his watch. ‘If we get a shift on we should just be able to get up there and back before I have to head off for my meeting with BH.’
David and Jo splashed their way up to site in the Land Rover, fording pools of water more like small lakes than puddles. He pulled on the handbrake and patted the top of the steering wheel. ‘The old rust bucket has her uses.’
Jo opened the passenger door, swinging her body round to enable her to push off against the footrest. A moment of resistance was followed by a loud ripping sound as her jacket caught on a metal rivet on the door surround.
‘Shit!’
David made his way round to examine the damage.
She raised an arm aloft and looked at him accusingly. The two sheets of Gore-Tex previously forming the front and back of her waterproof now flapped freely in the whipping wind and rain. ‘Lovable old rust bucket, huh?’
David looked crestfallen. ‘Nothing’s perfect.’
He made his way round to the rear door of the Land Rover and began rummaging beneath a midden of buckets and plastic bags. Jo was fiddling with a large bunch of keys, trying to find the right one to open the office.
David tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Here, Clare, left this in the back.’ He thrust a bundle of muddied red fabric towards her. ‘Put it on then, before you get drenched!’
She hurriedly pulled on Clare’s bright red waterproof, flinging he
r own into the back of the Land Rover in exchange. Suitably attired, she turned to David. ‘Why don’t you back up to the office steps so we don’t get the plans soaked?’
It took the two of them less than ten minutes to select the sheets of drafting film they needed and roll the plans up into neat cylinders for their journey back to base camp. They stacked them all into two plastic carry boxes, and David hefted them into the back of the Land Rover.
He glanced down at his watch. ‘If we get a move on, I should just be able to get over to Swindon in time for the meeting.’
She was checking distractedly through the pockets of her unaccustomed waterproof. Finally, she looked up at him. ‘I can’t find the keys.’
David raised his hand in the air and dangled the Land Rover keys in front of her.
‘No, the site hut keys. I had them to open the office and now I can’t find them.’
David let out a long, low sigh.
‘You get the plans back to the others at camp and get off to your meeting,’ she suggested. ‘I know they’re here somewhere. I’ll have to go through the office.’
‘How are you going to get back?’
‘I’ve got legs.’
‘I’m really not sure about leaving you up here on your own, Jo.’
She knew what he meant. They hadn’t talked about the newspaper article since she’d joined the dig. But she could see he’d been more than usually cautious about security around site. And Jenny’s untimely death had made them all the more aware of how precarious and precious life was.
‘I’ll be fine. I’m not going to be up here long.’
She could sense his anxiety as he touched her lightly on the arm. ‘Promise me once you’ve locked up you’ll go straight back down to camp.’ She nodded. He hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘If you’re sure?’
She nodded again, gesturing towards the Land Rover. ‘Get going.’
It took her longer than she’d anticipated to solve the problem with the keys. Unable to find them, she’d had to root through the tool box to find a spare padlock before she could secure the office. By which time the torrential rain had transmuted itself into an all-enveloping cloud which seemed to permeate every inch of her skin.
She cursed under her breath, pulled the hood of Clare’s waterproof up tight around her face and began the trudge down the lane back towards camp. Approaching halfway on her journey, the width of the lane diminished, its grass verge narrowing. Water gushed downhill over the potholed tarmac surface like a river filling a dry stream bed. She struggled to gain her footing as she climbed onto the narrow verge to avoid the cascade, grateful for the reassuring squelch of her gum boots in the saturated turf.
Behind her she could hear the low thrum of a diesel engine. She turned aside. Her back against the straggly remnants of the ill-kempt hedge, she leant against the prickles of the blackthorn to give the driver room to pass. It sounded like a four by four. But the impenetrable shroud of moisture that swathed the whole of the Downs prevented her from seeing either driver or vehicle.
It seemed to have pulled up behind her. Maybe it was David, having come back for her. She was about to step down into the road to check when the pitch of the engine shifted up a notch and the lights reared up towards her. Raising her hand in front of her face, she tried to shield herself from the dazzling glare of halogen. She pressed herself backwards, forcing herself to endure the hypodermic intrusion of sloe thorns through skin. Her boots dug into the grass verge, sending a scree of mud sliding onto the road surface below, unbalancing her into the hedge in the process.
For a second, the noise of the engine quietened and the beams of light wheeled away from her line of sight. She rolled sideways and tried to manoeuvre herself onto all fours to push up against what remained of the hedge and regain her footing. She was aware of the palms of her hands being punctured by the thorns ripping into the soft skin. But, with one hand clutched to her side in an attempt to dull the sharp pain in her ribs, somehow she managed to scramble upright.
She could hear the diesel engine idling. They could have killed me. They could have damn well killed me! They just seemed to be sitting there. Well, she wasn’t going to let the bastards get away with it. She stepped towards the vehicle, rehearsing the stream of invective she would deliver. Then suddenly the engine roared. Two beams of light angled up over her head and she felt the sickening impact of metal on bone.
‘Sounds like David’s back.’ Tony was standing behind the bar, drying up glasses. He inclined his head in the direction of the car park from where the sound of a low chugging engine was coming.
Margaret looked up from behind the plan she’d been studying and laid it on the table in front of her. Tony had allowed them to commandeer a corner of the bar as a temporary office and she was surrounded by ring binders full of mud-smeared context sheets.
When the door opened, it was Ed, not David, who appeared. She watched as he divested himself of his tweed cap and Barbour, shaking silver pearls of water first from its waxed surface and then from himself in a manner that reminded her of an old Labrador she’d once had. She smiled. ‘You look like a man who could do with a drink.’
‘Astute as ever, Peggy.’ Her displeasure at his use of the diminutive was muted when he added, ‘Care to join me?’
‘You could twist my arm.’
‘G and T for me, a whiskey for Peggy and whatever you’re having.’ Tony dutifully obliged. Ed raised his glass to hers. ‘To old times.’
‘I’d rather drink to the future.’
He nodded, chinked his glass against hers and took a long slug of G and T.
The strained expression on his features was all too apparent. ‘Rough morning?’
‘I’ve had the police round at my place asking questions about Gerald and the first dig.’
‘Only to be expected in the circumstances.’
‘I could have done without it.’
‘I suspect that’s a common reaction to finding the police on one’s doorstep.’
Over Ed’s shoulder, Margaret saw the door to the ladies’ swing open.
‘Where’s mine?’ Clare grinned across the bar.
Ed jerked his head round, causing the glass in his hand to lurch sideways and slop a trail of colourless liquid onto the sleeve of his jacket. Margaret watched the colour return to his complexion as he placed his glass carefully on the bar and mopped up the damage with a tissue.
He smiled at Clare and cleared his throat. ‘What would you like?’
She joined them at the bar, placing a hand briefly on his arm by way of an apology. ‘Glass of Shiraz, please. Hope you haven’t got a dicky ticker, Ed?’
‘I think it’s the police that have given him a bit of a fright,’ Margaret said.
Clare looked quizzical.
‘I’ve had Sally Treen round at my place asking questions.’
Clare offered a sympathetic smile.
‘I imagine they’ll get round to us all eventually,’ Margaret said.
Ed looked around the bar. ‘No David or Jo?’
‘David’s at a meeting and Jo’s still up on-site.’ Margaret walked over to the window, wiped away the condensation and peered out. The blanket of low-hanging cloud was getting thicker. ‘Someone ought to go and look for her. It’s been nearly two hours.’
Clare said, ‘I tried her mobile. There was no reply. She always turns it off when she’s working. You know what she’s like. She’s probably got caught up in something at the office.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
‘I can’t stand it; we’ve been here hours and we still have no idea how she is. Even that paramedic wouldn’t tell us anything.’
It was Clare’s second trip to Great Western A & E in a month and she was enjoying this one even less than the first. She was sitting next to Margaret on the hard plastic chairs in the waiting area. David was pacing the floor in front of them.
Margaret wrapped an arm around Clare’s shoulder, enveloping her in the fuzzy green wool of her cardigan,
and looked over towards David.
He dropped onto his haunches, pressing Clare’s hands between his. ‘If it’s anybody’s fault it’s mine. I could see the weather was foul; I should have insisted on driving her back to camp. But all I could think about was that bloody meeting with British Heritage.’
Clare sniffed. ‘No, I should have gone to look for her when Margaret suggested it. God knows how long she’d been lying there when they found her.’
David shook his head. ‘If I hadn’t given her your jacket, her mobile wouldn’t have been in the back of the Land Rover when you tried to phone her.’
Margaret said, ‘Oh for pity’s sake, listen to the pair of you! Carrying on like this isn’t going to help anyone. None of us are to blame for what happened to Jo. And what she needs right now is our love and support. It’s our job to make sure she gets through this.’
Clare looked up into David’s steady grey-green eyes. He squeezed her hands and nodded.
The double doors at the end of the corridor swung open and a female doctor wearing green overalls entered the waiting room. She looked exhausted. Clare wiped her eyes and blew her nose with a paper hanky that Margaret produced from her cardigan pocket.
The doctor glanced down at her clipboard. ‘Is there anyone here with Josephine Granski?’
They all nodded.
‘Are you relatives?’
David stepped forward. ‘We’re the nearest thing she’s got on this side of the Atlantic.’
She offered a practised smile. ‘You’ll have to do, then.’
Was the smile a good sign or a consummate professional trying to soften the blow? Clare couldn’t bear it any longer; she had to know.
She stood up. ‘Is she … ?’
‘She’s just come out of surgery. She’s sustained multiple fractures to her ribs and her left femur, as well as a depressed cranial fracture.’