The Hidden Bones

by Nicola Ford

  He pulled himself upright, his eyes wide with alarm. ‘Is she alright?’

  She ignored the question and consulted her notes. ‘He told her that “People get hurt when they mess with things they don’t understand.” What do you think he meant by that, Mr Hart?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be asking him that?’ He paused. ‘Is Clare alright?’

  ‘No major injuries. But Ed Jevons was drunk. And very angry.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Your arrest.’

  She watched as he sat, head in hands, so that she could no longer see his eyes. He ran his fingers through his hair and breathed in deeply before lifting his head again. ‘You have to understand, Ed and I are like brothers. He’s been a better friend to me than I’ve had any right to expect.’

  ‘Well, he certainly demonstrated whose side he was on tonight.’

  ‘Ed’s always been very protective towards me. After the inquest, I was in a bit of a state. He knew something was wrong.’

  She gave him an encouraging nod.

  ‘He took me for a drink. Once I knew for sure it was Father in that urn, I had to tell someone. I told him everything. Do you know what he said?’

  Sally just looked at him.

  ‘He told me he already knew. Do you understand what I’m saying? He knew I’d killed my father. All these years and he’s said nothing. He said it didn’t matter.’

  ‘To him, maybe.’ Sally let the implication of her words linger. ‘How did he know?’

  ‘When he brought me home drunk that day, he was worried how my parents would react. So he hung around to check that I was OK. He saw the whole thing through the hall window.’

  She hoped she was managing to disguise her surprise. Did he really have no idea of the implications of what he was saying? He’d just provided her with the name of a witness – if she could get Ed Jevons to talk, that would stand up far better in court than a confession to something the accused claimed not to remember.

  ‘He saw my father attacking me. The fight. Everything.’

  So that was his angle. He was going for self-defence. The most convincing lies were always a version of the truth. If he’d persuaded his childhood chum to go along with this one in their cosy little chat after the inquest, it would explain why Ed was beginning to get so nervous about his role in the cover-up.

  Her tone hinted at her incredulity. ‘So he watched you kill your father and stood by and did nothing?’

  ‘When he heard Gerald’s car he legged it. What Ed did in the pub – I don’t condone it. But he was trying to protect me. If you’re going to blame anyone for all this, it should be me.’

  She cursed inwardly. She could have done without this. She’d only released Ed Jevons a few hours ago. But if she was going to prove Peter Hart’s guilt, she’d have to bring Jevons back in for questioning.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Clare stared down at the faded ink on the single sheet of foolscap in her hands and shivered, shocked by the startling ring of familiarity.

  She was sitting at the end of a long wooden table in an upstairs room of Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes. A large Gothic window set into the wall behind her flooded the room with natural light. The window, in combination with the functional plastic chairs stacked against the wall to her left, reminded her of a church vestry.

  When David had asked her to do some research on the flint collected from the area surrounding the barrows, she’d jumped at the chance, grateful for an excuse to take her away from the oppressive atmosphere that hung over the excavations. Three long, low cardboard boxes lay on the table in front of her. Beside them, the curator had deposited a small, blue cardboard wallet containing a sheaf of notes and letters written by Reverend Hemmings, the erstwhile vicar of Hungerbourne. The letters spanned a forty-year period from 1935 to 1974. Their subject matter centred on prehistoric stone tools collected from the fields in his parish.

  But these were no dusty museum accounts. Interspersed with the recording of the artefacts were tales that revealed the reverend’s interest in local folklore. Skimming through the pages, she’d discovered stories of unsuspecting travellers lured to their doom by ethereal nocturnal music emanating from the barrows, an otherworldly horseman and the dreadful consequences of the running of the Hungerbourne excavation.

  More slowly this time, she read the passage she was holding again.

  The tales foretell that when the bourne rises, suffering inevitably follows. The Woe Waters will not be denied.

  In her mind’s eye, she could see the sunflower-yellow letters daubed across the tea hut.

  ‘Got everything you need?’ She gave a start. In front of her stood the curator, a wizened little man in his early sixties who was standing beside her, absent-mindedly cleaning his spectacles on his green woollen tie.

  ‘What?’ She looked at him, momentarily disorientated, then nodded automatically. He smiled and, apparently satisfied, turned to leave. As he reached the door, she called out after him, ‘There is one thing.’ He turned to face her, expectant, his hands clasped together in front of him.

  ‘Has anyone else looked at these records recently?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘The only person to have touched them in my time here is me, when I re-bagged the flint.’

  He departed, seemingly satisfied that his duties had been discharged.

  Coincidence, then. Maybe she was starting to get paranoid.

  She fanned the letters out on the tabletop in front of her. The reverend, it seemed, had possessed more staying power than the curators with whom he’d conversed, because the names of the addressees changed on a regular basis.

  The letters were accompanied by lists of objects found, together with sketch maps of their locations, all penned on whisper-thin and now-yellowing paper. She smiled. Hemmings displayed all of the traits of a fellow enthusiast.

  Knowing from her experience as an undergrad that once she had her hands on the artefacts themselves she would find it difficult to drag herself back to examine the documents, she decided to complete her study of the letters and lists before examining the flint.

  The early letters were dominated by questions to the curator of the day, but as time passed Hemmings seemed to have developed more confidence in his own abilities. His epistles after the Second World War contained more assertions than questions, with Hemmings expounding on a series of his pet theories. By the late sixties, the cleric’s handwriting had become shaky, with an increasing frequency of ink blots and smears in evidence. For the first time too in these letters, he intimated he was no longer collecting all of the material himself, but had commissioned others to carry out the task. His mind had obviously remained willing and, judging by his letters, able, but his flesh, it seemed, had weakened.

  Next she turned to the accompanying pages of notes, lists and pencil sketches. With the exception of the increasing frailty of the handwriting in the later pages, they appeared at first reading to retain pretty much the same format throughout; locating all of the finds to their nearest field, with annotations detailing the month and year of discovery.

  But as she devoted more time to individual pages, she noticed minor differences. Some of the sketch maps had pairs of capital letters written in their top left-hand corner. Was it some sort of site code? She spread the pages containing the maps out in front of her. The letters didn’t correspond to field names. But individual pairs of letters did appear again and again with the same fields. She examined the dates on the maps and on the letters. The pairs of letters only appeared on the maps showing material collected during the late sixties and early seventies; the same period during which Hemmings had been forced to resort to using others to do his collecting for him. No great mystery, then. They must be the initials of the people who’d collected on his behalf.

  Clare withdrew her laptop from her bag and made notes about the documents in front of her, then turned her attention to the boxes containing the stone tools. The material inside the boxes was in
clear plastic bags. The brown paper bags that had originally contained the flints had been retained but consigned to the status of artefacts themselves, having been placed in large plastic bags at the rear of each box. The reason for their replacement became obvious when she examined them. They were in a poor state of repair, their pencil-written labels now barely legible. But someone had carefully transcribed the words from the paper bags onto their modern plastic equivalents.

  Going through each box in turn, Clare cross-checked the details on the bags with the details of the letters she’d recorded on the laptop. They were identical in every way except in the case of the later discoveries. For these, the names of the finders had been recorded in full on the bags. She’d known already from what Margaret had told her that she would find her name among the list of young collectors and, sure enough, there was Peggy Grafton, her name appearing against a whole series of different locations. But there were others too whose names were less familiar: Patrick Sweeney – Hungerbourne Bottom; David Clifford (a younger sibling of the irascible George, perhaps) – Small Penning.

  And there was one other, familiar but unexpected: Edward Jevons – Old Barrows Field.

  The unstarched cotton of the curtains hung limply down, framing Clare’s view of the bustling marketplace from the open window of the Bear Hotel in Devizes. She nursed her orange juice in the near-empty bar. The attempt at ventilation had failed to dissipate the stifling heat. Not the heat of a classic English summer, but a sticky oppressive heat. Neither the temperature nor the half-eaten mozzarella and tomato baguette that lay abandoned on her plate had done anything to help her make her mind up about what she should do.

  She leant back in her chair and checked her watch. Six-thirty. They’d be off-site by now. She plucked her mobile out of the bottom of her bag and punched in Margaret’s number.

  ‘Professor Bockford speaking.’

  Clare could hear the sound of chattering voices, and the clatter of plates and cutlery in the background. ‘Margaret, I’m still down in Devizes. I need to check something with you.’

  ‘Can’t it wait? I’m in the middle of sorting the chores team out.’ Margaret sounded as if the heat of the day was getting to her.

  ‘No, I don’t think it can.’

  There was an unmistakable exhalation of breath at the other end of the line. ‘Very well. Fire away.’

  ‘The common interest you and Ed shared. Was it fieldwalking for Reverend Hemmings?’

  ‘Yes. He roped in several local youngsters to help.’

  ‘Was Peter one of them?’

  ‘Once or twice, maybe, but Ed and I were the only two who stuck at it. Peter didn’t have the slightest interest in archaeology. I always thought it was a bit of a disappointment to Gerald. But Ed and I were out in all weathers collecting.’ The memory seemed to lighten Margaret’s mood. She chuckled. ‘These days I suppose you’d say Hemmings operated on a productivity basis. When we found something really good he would tell us one of his tales.’

  ‘About the local folklore.’

  ‘That’s right. How do you know that?’

  ‘I’ve been reading Hemmings’ letters. But that’s not important. Margaret, who actually found the first sun disc?’

  ‘Ed, of course. Why do you think it was called the Jevons disc?’

  Clare finished the call and set her phone down next to her tepid orange juice. The prickle of perspiration on the palms of her hands wasn’t due to the warmth of the evening. How could she have been so stupid? The disc was named after the son, not the father. She wiped her hands on her black jeans and picked up her mobile.

  ‘David Barbrook.’ His voice was faint, the signal poor.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Up on-site.’

  ‘Still?’

  ‘I’ve found something.’

  She didn’t have time for a debate on archaeology now. ‘Does that mean you’ll be on-site for a while?’

  ‘Looks like it. Why?’

  ‘I need to talk to you.’ The line crackled. ‘I’m going to come over.’

  David slipped his mobile into the pocket of his moleskins, picked up his trowel and knelt down in the middle of the trench. A dark brown spread of soil in front of him marked the site of a pit. There was no indication it had ever held a wooden post. That tallied with Gerald’s records of it containing a cremation. Like others he’d dug in the past, except in this one Joyce Clifford had unearthed a sun disc.

  He began again, scraping away at a small concavity within the large dark splodge of earth. It shouldn’t take long to bottom it. The dip was filled with a mixture of chalk rubble and a lighter gingery-coloured soil and, as his team’s records suggested, it had been formed by someone digging into the fill of the earlier pit. Not unusual in itself. But why was there was no mention of this second feature in Gerald’s records?

  David sat back on his haunches, trying to make sense of the conundrum. What was the sequence? A large pit had been dug into the chalk bedrock in the Bronze Age. The contents of that pit had been excavated and removed by Gerald’s team during the 1973 dig. At the end of the season, the pit had been backfilled; he could tell that from the remains of the decaying Woodbine fag packet poking out of the top of the fill of the larger, darker splodge. And then the spoil from the excavations had been used to recreate the profile of the barrow mound. All perfectly normal at the end of an excavation. But why had someone dug another much smaller hole into the top of Gerald’s backfill and then filled it in again, before the mound had been reconstructed?

  He sighed. It probably wasn’t very important in the grand scheme of things. But it was a puzzle. And he didn’t like puzzles – he preferred solutions. He ran his fingers through his hair and wiped the perspiration on the sleeve of his shirt. The warm and humid weather of the last couple of days was beginning to take its toll. He’d almost had enough. He was looking forward to a cool shower, a pint and an evening with Sally. But he needed to finish this before he could call it a day.

  He leant forward again, pushing the metal blade of his trowel into the loose chalky soil. As he dragged it backwards it hit something solid. Probably a stone. But he’d better check. He hunched forward over the hole to get a closer look. His arms and back felt suddenly cold. He looked up to see a tall figure silhouetted by a penumbra of sunlight.

  David put his hand up to shield his eyes. ‘Shit, Ed! You nearly gave me a heart attack.’

  Ed made no attempt to move out of the glare of the sun. ‘Been busy while I’ve been away?’

  ‘Just tying up a few loose ends. You know how it gets at the end of a dig.’

  Ed nodded slowly. ‘Oh yes. I know how it gets.’

  David had the uncomfortable feeling he was missing something. Did Ed consider him guilty by dint of his association with Sally? ‘Look, mate. I’m sorry about what happened with Peter. I know you two go back a long way.’ Ed stood perfectly still, his head cocked to one side. ‘I can understand you were angry, but Sal was just doing her job.’

  Ed raised a hand, pointing towards the hole in front of David. ‘Don’t let me stop you finishing what you’re doing.’

  David leant over again. Using his fingertips, he began to feel around the soil he’d loosened. He could feel something metallic against his skin. He was aware of Ed shifting slightly to one side as if to get a better view. The sun’s rays poured into the void left where Ed’s body had been and caught the edge of the object David had begun to reveal, directing a deep golden beam of light onto his chest. For a second, he knelt entranced as the pattern of light played on his shirt.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Ed said.

  David gazed at the object in front of him. He recognised it immediately. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, pick it up! You only find something that exquisite once in a lifetime.’

  David picked the small golden object up. The pitted disc at its centre was the colour of caramelised blood orange. He ran his fingers around the edges of the encircling gold, removing the soil that st
uck to the concentric circular indentations that ran around its circumference. He stopped and looked up, his fingers encountering a rip in the surface of the tinfoil-thin metal. Ed’s expression was calm, almost serene.

  With a moment of dreadful clarity, David realised that here standing in front of him was his solution. ‘That’s not true, is it, Ed? You’ve found it twice.’

  Ed smiled. ‘Not exactly. It was never lost.’

  Ed reached out a hand, palm upturned, and motioned to David to pass him the disc. David didn’t move. Now that Ed was no longer silhouetted by the sun, he could see Ed’s other hand was far from empty. He was holding a shotgun. David’s arms felt like jelly. He was pretty sure if he hadn’t been kneeling, his legs would have too. He looked down at the glittering object in his hand, struggling to process the full implications of what was happening.

  ‘I didn’t have you down as a stupid man, David. Hand it over!’

  The sweat poured off him. Every instinct he possessed was screaming at him to do what Ed was telling him. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t make it easy.

  He clasped his fingers tightly around the disc. ‘So you can make it disappear again?’

  Ed pulled the stock of the gun closer to his body, his finger caressing the trigger. ‘It’s going back where it belongs.’

  ‘You won’t get away with this.’

  Ed whipped the shotgun through one hundred and eighty degrees, gripping the barrel with both hands halfway down its length. For a split second, David thought he was going to give him the gun. Then Ed drew the weapon back in an arc above his shoulders and David felt the wooden stock crash down against the side of his skull.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Clare bumped the wheels of the Fiesta over the rutted pasture. With all the rain, the site had begun to turn into a swamp. But the warmer weather of the last few days had hardened the tyre tracks, which now resembled the scars of giant talons that clawed their way down the lush green hillside. She parked up behind the site huts and climbed out. The mud-streaked cream rectangle of the most recently opened trench was visible from where she stood. No sign of anyone there. David must be in the office or in one of the trenches higher up the slope.