The Way, the Truth and the Dead Read online

  The mood was broken by the sound of ambulance doors opening in the car park behind them. Lane glanced across.

  ‘You’ll forgive me, Mr Smiley, but I need to have a closer look.’

  They shook hands and Smiley departed. Lane arrived at the ambulance and the sheet covering the corpse was pulled back. He had noticed it before, but people lost their humanity, their dignity, when their bodies were removed from their scene of death. And it wasn’t just the intrusion of the modern world – the bright lights, shiny aprons, the smell of disinfectants – either. Sure, human remains were always treated with respect: removed carefully; eyelids closed; limbs arranged with restraint. Maybe that was it, he thought: they hadn’t flexed their arms, or closed their eyes themselves. It had been done for them. Like dolls or shop mannequins. Objects, not people.

  But as he looked down, Lane became aware that this body was strangely interesting. Most of his face had gone, but somehow he could imagine his voice. A youngish man. And fit, too. He’d obviously worked outside, but he was no workman. Hands rough, but not calloused. Bit his nails.

  ‘Seen enough, sir?’

  The voice broke into his thoughts. Lane nodded and turned, lost in thought.

  A double click. The back doors had closed. The ambulance drew away.

  * * *

  Back in his car, Lane put on rubber gloves and took the wallet from its police plastic bag. The driving licence identified the owner as a Mr Stanley Beaton, born 18 July, 1972. Current residence: 21 Priory Lane, Peterborough. Lane knew the road and the area well; it was to the west of the railway station, in the Longthorpe direction. Very nice middle-class residential district. Slowly and very carefully he looked through the various cards, searching for clues. He left the usual ones in place – Visa, MasterCard, National Trust, English Heritage – but two caught his eye in passing. The dead man had been a member of the Council for British Archaeology and of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists. Suddenly the clothes and the few other items found in his pockets began to make sense.

  In the last fold of the wallet were the cards he was looking for; these were from people, not corporations. In among them was a name he immediately recognised. Lane smiled – that was more like it. This time he carefully pulled the card from the wallet. It was corporate-style, quite well-designed and issued by Paul Flynn Consulting Ltd. Gingerly he turned it over. There were traces of a smeared muddy finger-mark, not a print, and a scrawled message: ‘Great visit, Stan. Many thanks, AC’. This was followed by a clearly written mobile number. Just to be sure, Lane pulled out his own phone and checked it against what he had for Alan Cadbury. They were identical.

  The next step was easy: he pressed the call button.

  Part 1

  Finding the Way

  One

  Alan Cadbury was driving across flat, open fenland, broken only by leaning telegraph poles and isolated farmhouses. Each farm was accompanied by a bonfire, piled high with tyres, old pallets and the sort of farmyard rubbish that would cost a fortune to drop into a skip. It was going to be an explosive evening. It was 5 November, Guy Fawkes Night. Ever since he’d been a boy, growing up on a similar fenland farm, Alan had been made aware that Guy Fawkes had been a traitor and he was reminded that ‘the Fens were for Cromwell’. He remembered, too, how life-like the effigies had been and how neighbours, well-oiled with local ale, had cheered when the flames eventually reached them. But today the symbolism had gone. Now Bonfire Night was merely an excuse for fireworks. Alan sighed. Maybe it was for the best. History is sometimes best forgotten.

  It was a dry Friday evening, after one of the wettest autumns on record. Already the night-time frosts were starting to enlarge the thousands of potholes that had become such a feature of the ridged and tilting local roads. He was in the peat fens, a few miles north of Ely. Briefly Alan had considered exchanging his diesel-guzzling old grey Fourtrak for a smaller, more economic car, but it would never have coped with these conditions.

  Lane’s words were still echoing in Alan’s mind: River. Body. Stan. Although a mere 38 years old, Alan was no stranger to death. Just over 18 months ago, his work colleague Steve Allen had been killed in a tragic event when a brick-built cistern collapsed beneath his feet. It had taken Alan six months to get over the worst of it. And he still had flashbacks to that terrible scene in the old cow shed. He shuddered at the memory. But Stan Beaton is, no, was different. Very different.

  They had been very close at university – but away from halls of residence and lectures. They were both more Town than Gown. For a brief moment Alan smiled. In their first year at Leicester their fellow students had dubbed them Fish and Chips, partly because that’s where they always ate, but also because they went so well together. Alan always claimed to be Fish.

  ‘And you’ve the eyes to go with it,’ Stan once said.

  Alan shrugged, he wasn’t bothered. ‘You’re just jealous.’

  There were times they didn’t need words. Alan felt his eyes reddening. He took a deep breath.

  Stan decided to do the Romano–British option in their third year. Alan had focused on the Bronze Age, but they both shared a passion for fieldwork. They both believed that archaeology was over-obsessed with the study of objects and that you would never get to the truth about the past if you ignored site, landscape and setting. People don’t live in a vacuum: their surroundings shaped them. Objects – artefacts – helped humans react to each other and the physical world around them. But that was all. It was the wider stage, the setting, that concealed the real insights.

  As time passed, they kept in contact, even though their careers had started to take them in slightly different directions. Alan became more and more interested in the later prehistory of the Fens, while Stan was fascinated by what happened to the rural population when the Romans invaded Britain. Maybe, Alan wondered, that was why they had remained so close: Stan valued Alan’s approach to landscape prehistory, which he himself was applying, but in his own way, to the slightly later period. In his heart of hearts Alan had envied Stan’s new project at Fursey: it had so much potential.

  And that was what had been keeping Alan awake for the past few weeks, ever since Lane had phoned him that night. After his two visits to Stan at Fursey the previous summer and autumn, Alan had realised that his friend had stumbled across the ideal site for context. Because everything was still there, buried and preserved beneath thick accumulations of flood-clay. Everyone knew about the volcanic ash at Pompeii and Herculaneum, but this was really no different: just wetter. And at Fursey it had happened towards the end of the Iron Age and into Roman times – precisely the period Stan had been researching for 15 years. A wave of sadness hit Alan as he remembered the last time he had seen his friend alive – and that was the word for it: alive. Fursey meant that his career had taken off. And it was an opportunity that his friend was grasping with both hands. They both knew it would be the making of him. And Alan had been glad: very, very glad.

  He pulled into a field gateway and allowed the emotion to wash over him. No point in fighting it. He didn’t know how long it was before he lifted his head from his arms folded over the steering wheel. He looked in the mirror: no tears. Even as a child he rarely wept. But he noticed his hands were shaking. Three deep breaths: time to get going. Ignition. Back on the road.

  * * *

  As he bounced across a particularly rough stretch of potholes, Alan recalled some emotional evenings when Stan had admitted he had a drink problem. Although Alan liked a few drinks himself, he realised that Stan’s problems were altogether different. After talking things over with a medical friend, Alan became convinced that moderation would never be the answer. It was a case of all or nothing. Eventually Stan agreed. Then he’d landed a good excavation project in the Trent Valley and booze became a thing of the past. Or that’s what Alan had believed.

  Up ahead he could see the ruins of Fursey Abbey, which seemed far more spectacular than when he’d visited them first, the summer before last when th
e tall lime trees in the park had shaded and seemed to dwarf the monastic remains. That was over a year ago, but now, after several sharp October frosts, the leaves were mostly gone and the ruins seemed to have doubled in size against the infinite fens to the north.

  Back then, his world had just been turned on its head: he’d had a terminal row with the only woman he ever felt any real affection for and his nice, secure job had blown up in his face.

  He had first met Dr Harriet Webb on his previous case, which involved a death in Leicester and the excavation of the remote churchyard of St Guthlic’s in the Lincolnshire Fens. Harriet had been the human bones specialist and his codirector of excavations. Their relationship had been entirely professional at first. Then it had grown into something very, very special, which Alan had screwed up – entirely, he now recognised, because he was obsessed with a mystery and unable to control his own feelings. So she had left.

  As he approached the abbey ruins, memories of that previous November’s visit came flooding back. It had been his first chance to examine one of the Ely islands closely and he’d been astonished by the steepness of everything: dry land islands seemed to dive into the black fen, and hills really were hills. It was so different from the north-western Fens, which he and Stan were more familiar with, where wet and dry blended together, almost imperceptibly, and where islands protruded at most a metre or two. They had laughed together after the tour: it was such a simple landscape to read. Stan, however, was worried that the wet fringes around the dry landscapes would be too narrow, because the ground was sloping so steeply. And it was these wet fringes that held the greatest archaeological potential. But Alan wasn’t so sure. Yes, in theory, Alan acknowledged, his friend was probably right. But in life and archaeology the truth is rarely that simple: glaciers and water can do the strangest of things; narrow fringes can become extended borderlands of seemingly infinite potential.

  He slowed down and glanced at his watch. He knew from his two previous visits that Fursey Abbey was owned by the Cripps family who were aristocrats and substantial local landowners. They ran the Fursey Abbey project that had employed Stan to oversee the archaeological survey; so they were bound to have given him a big send-off – the invitation he’d received had been properly engraved; left to him, he’d have done them on his computer.

  The family wouldn’t be back from the crematorium until noon and he didn’t want to stand around chatting to the local great and good, who were bound to be there, sipping cups of tea while glancing around to check who else was there. He detested that sort of thing; networking, they called it: all fake smiles and hypocritical ‘darlings’. He pulled over to the verge and turned the engine off. He thought back to that last time he’d seen Stan. Almost exactly a year ago, but then it had been foggy and wet. Stan showed him a couple of trenches that he was having trouble understanding, but together they had worked the sequence out. It was quite tricky: two episodes of back-filling, with an off-centre recut. Then they went down to the pub. He smiled at the memory: the Cripps Arms.

  As they’d walked down to the pub, Stan spoke a lot about his not drinking anymore. Alan even offered to drive them both to a coffee shop in Ely. But Stan would have none of it; he wanted to demonstrate his willpower. He kept mentioning the project’s archaeological consultant, Dr Peter Flower of Fisher College, Cambridge, who, it seemed, had done a lot to help him. Stan had become a huge admirer of Flower – ‘such a kind and helpful man’ – a view that Alan most definitely didn’t share. The two of them had an unfortunate shared history. Flower had been the external advisor for his PhD at Leicester. The thesis had been on Bronze Age farming practices in Eastern England, in their European contexts, with special reference to the Fenland Basin. Everyone who had read it thought it superb, but not Peter Flower. That gilded Cambridge academic had other, more trendy, ideas. At the time, he was heavily into post-structuralist general theory and wanted the thesis raised above ‘the merely descriptive’. Alan had tried to argue that he had explained how the regional economies might have articulated, but no, that wasn’t enough for Flower, who wanted him to suggest ‘higher level resolutions’ – whatever they were. One evening, after a few too many beers, Alan phoned him at Cambridge and told him where he might want to shove his higher level resolutions. He still didn’t regret it, but that was the last time they had spoken. And thanks to Dr Flower, Alan was still Mr Cadbury.

  Alan still detested the man, even after 14 years. Meanwhile, there was Stan, walking alongside him, singing Flower’s praises: how he had encouraged him to apply for the job and had found him a place in a rehab clinic. All Alan could think was that he must have had some nasty ulterior motive.

  Once inside the pub, Alan had ordered a beer and then felt bad as he drank it. Stan was pointedly enjoying his long Virgin Mary with lots of Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce and tomato juice. Stan had spoken warmly not just about Flower, but Candice, too. Alan clearly remembered him saying how he liked the set-up at Fursey: the staff on the estate, the pub, the locals; it still had the feel of a traditional rural village. How they gave him time to set up his work.

  ‘I like to start things slowly,’ his friend had said. ‘No point in running before you can walk.’

  Alan had smiled. It was like old times; his friend’s caution had returned. Booze had clouded his judgement, but now Alan could see he was thinking more lucidly.

  ‘So we’re following the drainage board diggers, recording sections and levelling them in. I did a crash course at the old tech in GPS. Turned out to be very useful.’

  This was the Stan of Fish and Chips days. He was always going on ‘useful’ courses. And Alan was quite happy to pick his brains. Another wave of sadness hit him, as he remembered the rest of that afternoon in the pub.

  Stan had described how he was about to start surveying in the deeply buried floodplain soils, just off the slopes of the abbey island. Alan knew all about river flood-clay – alluvium – and what it could conceal, especially around the fringes of those slightly higher areas of land. This raised ground would have seemed like seasonally flooded islands in the pre-­drainage era. He was able to offer Stan a few useful practical tips. Towards the end of their lunch break, Alan realised that he had stopped worrying about Stan’s drinking and had begun to relax. He even bought a second round of drinks. Yes, he thought, it had been good. Very good.

  His memories of Stan were suddenly interrupted by activity further down the road towards the village. It was the cortège of black undertaker’s limousines returning from the crematorium. He took a deep breath; time to make a move.

  * * *

  As Alan turned off the road into the short, tree-lined drive leading up to the buildings of what had once been a working farm, he was struck by the amount that had been done since he was there last. A large and very elaborate marquee had been positioned to obscure most of the building site, but Alan could see that work on converting the two barns was well advanced. The old restaurant and visitor centre, which had been squeezed into some 1950s prefabricated, concrete-floored piggeries, had been abandoned and partially demolished, although the old kitchen block still seemed to be in use. Stan had told him that the next year was going to see some major changes, and he hadn’t been exaggerating.

  He walked into the marquee, feeling strangely confident. Normally such occasions were to be dreaded. But not this one. He knew exactly why he was here: to find out the truth about Stan’s death and this was where he was going to meet everyone who could have played a part in it. If real life had been a murder mystery, then he’d been given the final scene-in-the-library at the very beginning. It was a golden opportunity and he was determined to make the most of it.

  He paused and looked around him. He was impressed. The Cripps family had gone to a lot of trouble to give their ex-employee a fitting send-off. Alan stood at the back of the small line of people who had arrived in the two limos, at the front of which, being greeted very warmly by Candice Cripps, who Alan had met on both his previous visits to Fursey
, were, Alan assumed, Stan’s parents – there was certainly a strong family resemblance. Alan was struck by the contrast between Candice and the older couple. She was standing tall and upright, her shoulders back, very much the relaxed host at the big event. And she had the looks to pull it off: luxuriant long dark hair and a close-fitting mourning dress that could have graced a catwalk. Behind them, came a few other younger relatives. Alan stood back; he liked being a fly-on-the-wall and he enjoyed working out how human gatherings were organised. In fact, it was what had attracted him to anthropology and archaeology in the first place. And it was clear that Candice Cripps was running this show. Every so often somebody would whisper something to her and she would nod or tell them to delay; messages were also coming through on her phone. The outside caterers, who had clearly worked for her before, had a person standing permanently beside her. It put Alan in mind of a television crew, and she was very much the director.

  When she had finished greeting the last of Stan’s relatives, a man in a dark suit and black tie handed her a cup of tea. He was about to leave when she took hold of his arm and to Alan’s surprise, then horror, they both walked towards him. Instinctively Alan looked over his shoulder, but there was nobody more important standing behind him. He had been the last guest to arrive.

  ‘Alan,’ she almost but not quite gushed. ‘Stop shrinking into the shadows. I want you to meet my husband, John.’

  John was in his forties with the tiniest hint of middle-aged spread. He had an educated, but not over-precise, way of talking. Alan detected tradition, but tinged with modernity; his clothes and bearing gave the same impression. Alan also detected a privileged background, but not necessarily an easy life. There was something slightly tired about his manner.

  ‘This has been a tragic time for all of us.’ They shook hands as John spoke. ‘Stan was such a nice man, and although most of it was well over my head, Peter Flower assures me that his research was truly groundbreaking – if you’ll forgive the rather weak pun.’