by Nicola Ford
Margaret stood reading them intently for several minutes. Finally she looked up at Clare. ‘I obviously recognise Stephen’s name but who exactly is James Douglas?’
‘He was a colleague of Stephen’s and he was his executor. They’d known each other for years. He was the best friend Stephen had. It’s James who’s been helping me to unravel the mess that Stephen left our finances in.’
‘Forgive me, my dear, but I don’t quite understand what it is you want my opinion on.’
‘James was down in Salisbury a few weeks ago. He invited me out to dinner with him. We had a lovely evening.’
‘Ah, I see. You’re feeling guilty for being attracted to Stephen’s best friend. These things aren’t unheard of, you know. It’s only natural you should feel drawn to one another under the circumstances – sharing a common bond, so to speak.’
Clare blushed and shook her head. ‘No. I don’t think you do see, Margaret. James seems like a lovely man – though I admit I didn’t have much time for him when Stephen was alive. He was as shocked as I was when Stephen’s misadventures in property first came to light. When we had dinner the other evening he told me that he knew nothing about the investments Stephen was intending to make.’
‘Well, these emails certainly suggest that at the very least James has an exceedingly poor memory.’
Clare nodded. ‘But is that all it suggests, Margaret?’
‘You mean can you trust him? I don’t know, my dear. I’ve never met the man. Maybe he did know about the investments and he’s just too embarrassed to say so. He wouldn’t be the first man to try to rewrite their personal history in order to win the affections of an attractive young woman.’
Clare said, ‘No. I suppose not. But he’s been such a support since Stephen died. I honestly don’t know where I’d be without him.’
‘And if he’s been dealing with Stephen’s finances he’s obviously not after you for your money.’
Clare snorted. ‘No. I suppose that’s true. And just for the record, Margaret, I’ve never thought of James as anything other than a friend.’
‘Well, that at least makes things a little more straightforward – though it really is time you started to dip your toe back into the water, you know.’
‘Margaret!’
‘I know, my dear, but a ring binder full of context sheets won’t keep you warm at night.’ Clare laughed and the museum attendant at the end of the row coughed meaningfully. ‘Well, whatever the situation is, my advice would be to have a care. He may be a reformed sinner. But at the very least he suffers from a faulty memory.’ She returned the wad of papers to Clare. ‘And he appears to have shown something of a lack of moral fibre in not attempting to dissuade his best friend from making these investments.’
The two women turned and began to walk towards the entrance side by side. As they neared the front door, Clare turned to Margaret and asked nervously, ‘Can I ask you one more question, Margaret?’
Margaret’s brow furrowed with concern. ‘Of course – though I can’t guarantee that I have the answer to all of life’s conundrums.’
‘Did you know that Jo was gay?’
‘Oh, heavens yes. I thought everyone knew. I understand it was part of the reason she chose to do her PhD over here. Escaping from a broken heart – or at least so the rumour mill goes.’
‘I don’t believe it. I’ve only been away from site for a few days and now it looks like a war zone.’ Clare was standing in front of the Portakabin, hands on hips, surveying the damage.
‘It could’ve been one heck of a lot worse. According to the docs at A & E, if that brick had hit Val just a couple of inches lower it could’ve blinded her – or worse. And take a look at this.’
Jo led Clare into the Portakabin and removed the ragged sheet of brown paper from the filing cabinet where she’d had it under lock and key, and spread it out on the table in front of them.
Clare said, ‘Well, there’s no mistaking the message, is there?’
‘Nope.’ Jo hesitated. ‘I don’t like to say this, Clare, but I think we’re in trouble here. Neil was saying someone wants us out of here and this proves he’s right. From where I’m standing things are looking pretty gnarly. I know this site is real important, but is it really worth risking these guys’ lives? Or yours, for that matter?’
Clare slumped down in her chair, head in hands. Through her fingers the bloodstains were still obvious to see on the wooden tabletop in front of her.
She drew in a long breath and hauled herself upright. ‘No, no it’s not. No site is worth that. But what choice do we have? If we pack it in now, that’s the Hart Unit finished. And none of those poor sods out there are going to thank us for laying them off. Half of them have got families to support. And how much chance do you reckon there is of them being able to pick up another job right now?’
Jo said, ‘What difference is it gonna make? The dig will be over in a couple of weeks anyhow. And they’ll all be out of work.’
‘All the more reason to keep going while we can. And I’m damned if I’m going to stand by and watch the Hart Unit fold and this site destroyed just because some lunatic wants us gone. We won’t take any chances, though. I want all the glass in the windows in these units replaced with Perspex, and under no circumstances is anyone to be left on-site on their own.’
Her memories of what had occurred at Hungerbourne, to first Jo and then David, were far too vivid to run the risk of ever allowing the experience to be repeated.
Jo said, ‘You know you won’t get any arguments from me on that score. I’m fine going along with this, Clare, but don’t you think it’s about time you tell David?’
‘What for? You told me yourself what he was like when he found out about Marshall turning up on-site shouting the odds. And he went nuts at me on the phone.’
Jo said, ‘It’s not the same.’
‘As far as I can see it’s exactly the same.’
Jo’s frustration at her friend’s obstinacy was obvious. ‘Why don’t you quit pretending and open your eyes? Everyone else can see it. Why can’t you? It’s because it was you.’
Clare could feel herself blushing. She dismissed the suggestion with a flick of her hand. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous, Jo. When David phoned me about the whole Marshall thing he was angry because the team had been threatened. His team. I understand that he feels a sense of responsibility towards them. But going round threatening people isn’t helping anyone, is it?’
Jo raised both hands in the air. ‘OK, OK. If that’s the way you want to deal with it, fine.’
In all the time she’d known her this was the closest Clare had ever come to seeing Jo angry. At least with her. And she wasn’t enjoying the experience.
She reached out and laid her hand on Jo’s shoulder. ‘Hey, I don’t want to fall out over this. You are OK with us carrying on digging, aren’t you?’
Jo nodded, but Clare could feel the tension in every bone of Jo’s body.
Clare asked, ‘And we’re still OK, aren’t we?’
Jo placed her hand on Clare’s and smiled. ‘Sure, we’re OK. If we’re gonna go down, we’re gonna go down together.’
Clare said, ‘Right, let’s get to work, then.’ She headed towards the doorway. ‘I’m going to see if I can get Neil to do something about these windows.’
Jo said, ‘You’re out of luck there.’
Clare turned to face her. ‘Why?’
‘Neil hasn’t turned up for work this morning.’
Clare asked, ‘Has he phoned?’
Jo shook her head. ‘Nope. I tried phoning, but his phone just went to voicemail.’
Clare said, ‘That’s not like him. He’s normally on-site before we are.’
Jo said, ‘When I spoke to Val on Saturday night she said he’d had to wait for hours with her at A & E. Maybe he’s just taking the time back that he’s owed.’
‘Maybe. But he’d normally have phoned to let us know by now. I’m worried about him, Jo. You said yourself he
seems really down at the moment. Between what happened on Saturday and how things are for him at home at the moment, if he got back late on Saturday night and got a whole load of grief from Sadie …’
‘What?’
‘Well, what if he did something daft?’
‘Like what exactly?’
Clare said, ‘I don’t know. Crabby said he used to have a problem with drugs and booze. Maybe he’s gone on a bender.’ She paused. ‘Can you hold the fort here for a couple more hours, Jo? I’m going to go down to Neil’s place and check to see if he’s OK.’
Jo said, ‘Sure. But I think you’re wasting your time.’
‘Where the hell are you, David? It sounds like Bedlam there.’
David was standing in a queue for coffee, one hand clamped over his ear, the other on his phone, surrounded by two hundred other people equally desperate for their mid-morning caffeine fix.
‘I’m in Manchester, remember, Sal, that Prehistoric Society conference I told you about.’
‘Do they all have to shout so loud?’
Whatever she’d phoned about it didn’t sound as if she was in a good mood.
‘Are you alright, Sal? You sound a bit odd.’
Sally said, ‘How very perceptive of you. As it happens I’m very far from alright. I’ve just got off the phone from speaking to Mark Stone.’
‘Oh.’
Now he thought he knew where this was heading. He scooped up a cup of black coffee, waving aside the offer of biscuits, and retreated to a seat on a nearby windowsill.
‘Oh, indeed. What the hell do you think you’re playing at, David? Mark’s just told me that one of his officers arrested you for common assault.’
‘It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, Sal. Honestly. Just a bit of a misunderstanding.’
‘You seem to forget, David, I’m a serving police officer. I know exactly what common assault is. He said it was Paul Marshall. Isn’t he the bloke your lot have got the contract with? The one whose money is keeping your unit afloat.’
David took a sip of his volcanically hot coffee and had immediate cause to regret it. ‘Ow!’
‘What was that?’
He ran his tongue over his burning lip. ‘Nothing. Look, Sal, it all got a bit out of hand, that’s all. When I got up to site on Friday, Jo told me Marshall had been out on-site calling the odds.’
‘Isn’t he entitled to do that? After all, he is paying their wages.’
‘He might be, but I’m not having anyone threatening my staff. They don’t get paid enough for that. He was well out of order. One of the lads had to strong-arm him off-site in the end.’
Sally said, ‘That doesn’t give you the right to go round hitting people though, does it? Didn’t your mum ever tell you two wrongs don’t make a right?’
‘It wasn’t like that. I just went round to his office to put him straight about a few things. He was the one who tried to throw a punch at me.’
Sally lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Do you realise how lucky you are, David? You could have ended up in court over this. You can get six months for common assault.’
David gulped. He hadn’t known that. And he rather wished he didn’t now.
‘It’s OK, Sal, I got off. I mentioned your name and they let me off with a caution.’
David could almost feel the tidal wave of fury propelling itself down the phone line. Sally’s voice wasn’t a whisper any more. ‘You did what? Christ almighty, David. I don’t believe this. For one thing that’s called perverting the course of justice, and for another, what the hell did you think you were doing dragging me into it?’
‘It’s OK, Sal. He was much more understanding after that. He said he knew you when you were in the force up there. Asked to be remembered to you. Charlie Waites, I think his name was.’
‘This isn’t some kind of joke, David. It’s my career you’re screwing with here. And you do realise, don’t you, that now that you’ve got a caution that means that you’ve got a criminal record. I shouldn’t go applying for other jobs any time soon if I were you.’
David puffed out his cheeks. That was something else he hadn’t known about.
‘Look, Sal, I’m sorry. I didn’t think things through. And I should never have dragged you into it. One thing just sort of led to another. I was so angry when Jo told me Marshall had been threatening Clare that I guess I just saw red.’
He knew they were the wrong words almost as soon as they’d come tumbling out of his mouth.
‘Clare! Didn’t you make her site director? I thought she was getting paid to take care of herself and the site. She’s not a child, David. You can’t do everything. And I’m sure Clare’s perfectly capable of dealing with difficult men. God knows you’re living proof there’s enough of them about. She doesn’t need some buffoon dashing round like a demented knight on a white charger clocking people on her behalf.’
He knew that he’d screwed up, and he’d screwed up really badly. But he’d had enough now. ‘OK, Sal, I get the message – you can stop now. I get the message.’
There was silence on the end of the phone. For a moment he thought the line had gone dead. But then he heard a sigh.
He said, ‘Anyway, never mind the rollicking. Why was your mate Mark phoning you? Surely he didn’t just want to share the good news about your fuckwit of a boyfriend.’
He could hear a stifled laugh at the other end of the phone. ‘Don’t even begin to think you’re forgiven for this, David Barbrook.’ David allowed himself a smile. ‘No. Do you remember that murder inquiry I’m heading up while you’re careering round Gloucestershire like a half-crazed loon?’
‘Yes. But what’s that got to do with Mark Stone?’
Sally lowered her voice again. ‘The guy we’ve arrested for it claims the victim had been working for Beth Kinsella. So I got Mark to check it out from his end. And it turns out he was right. Not only was he working for Kinsella but she sacked Jack Tyler for turning up to work drunk.’
‘What does that mean, Sal? Has Tyler’s murder got something to do with Beth Kinsella?’
‘Don’t go seeing reds under the bed, David. There’s nothing to worry about. We were just tying up a loose end. There’s no evidence to suggest Jack Tyler working for Beth was anything other than one of life’s peculiar coincidences.’
But David was worrying. And he didn’t like coincidences.
It had been called in by the young constable who’d been sent out to speak to one of the locals about some bit of petty vandalism up at the dig. But before he’d been able to get to his prospective interviewee he’d been stopped by a woman in her nightdress running down the middle of the street screaming at him. She’d seen it from her upstairs window in the garden next door.
Mark Stone’s day had been going from bad to worse. He’d overslept. And in his blurry-eyed state he’d managed to first short out the toaster by shoving a fork into it in an attempt to retrieve a recalcitrant slice of bread, and then dollop marmalade down the front of his only clean, if somewhat creased, shirt. As it had turned out the state of his shirt hadn’t been an issue because he was now standing in the back garden of number 6 Weaver’s Close, Bailsgrove, clad from head to foot in a white Tyvek onesie.
He hated days like today. Somehow it was always worse when you knew the victim. And unlike Beth Kinsella’s death there was no doubting that this time he was going to be investigating a murder. He’d already cordoned off the house and SOCO were in full swing.
He squatted down to take a closer look, being careful not to step into the enormous pool of blood. It was obvious even to him that his throat had been cut. Lying there on the concrete path, the life force drained from him, Wayne ‘Crabby’ Crabbs looked twenty years older than the last time he’d seen him. What was it he’d said to Clare Hills about him? ‘He inhabits a different world to the rest of us.’ Well, he certainly did now, the poor bastard.
He turned away to examine the second victim. At least this one wasn’t human. One of the SOCO team was squatting
down taking close-ups of it. It was a huge black bird. His sergeant – Ray – had confidently informed him it was a raven. He’d worked alongside Ray for the best part of a decade and it was the first time he’d found out the man was a twitcher. It really was a strange old morning. But what troubled Mark Stone wasn’t the bird itself but what had been done to it. Its skull had been crushed with a rock that still lay nearby; its throat had been cut and there was a length of orange baler twine cutting deep into what remained of its neck.
CHAPTER TWENTY
With Jack Tyler dead and Beth Kinsella dead, it meant that two people who’d worked on the Bailsgrove excavations had met an unnatural end in the last three months. And that was two too many for David’s liking.
Despite what Sally had said he just couldn’t get the connection out of his head. His paper was first up in the afternoon session, but he’d been on autopilot as he’d addressed the auditorium. As soon as he’d finished he’d made his apologies and departed.
David might have had second thoughts about slithering his way through Snake Pass in the worst of the winter snows, but it was only an hour and a half down the A57 across the Pennines from Manchester to Dronfield in the summer months and today there wasn’t so much as a raindrop in the air. He had no clear idea of exactly what he was going to do when he got there, but he did know that if there was anyone Beth Kinsella might have confided in it would have been her father.
From what Clare had told him, David knew Beth must have been close to him. David had spent the last few years watching his own father’s gradual decline from Alzheimer’s. But increasingly he’d watched from a distance. He was only too well aware of his own deficiencies in that department. He could never have cared for his father in the way that Beth had hers. And despite everything he might have said and thought about Beth Kinsella, he had to admit he admired her for it.
He knew he wouldn’t have any trouble finding the place. There was only one nursing home in Dronfield that specialised in dementia care. He’d visited it with his youngest brother when they’d been trying to find somewhere for their father; somewhere comfortable enough to assuage their guilt at abandoning him to an institution.