The Way, the Truth and the Dead Page 30

  Alan went straight down to the dig. Better warn people there’d be a crew lurking around the place today. Jake raised his eyes to the roof, Kaylee smiled broadly and Harriet said nothing.

  To Alan’s immense relief, as deadlines were now starting to loom, Frank lived up to his word, and nobody was really aware of his, or the TV crew’s, presence.

  After morning tea break, the cameraman had finished his close-up filming of the lifting and was now at the back of the shelter getting GVs of the dig. Alan was becoming increasingly desperate to break through the layer of professionalism that seemed to cocoon Harriet from him, and seemingly from nobody else. It would be nice, he thought, if she could treat me like Jake, or even like Kaylee. It was as if Harriet had read his mind.

  ‘Fancy a chance to redeem yourself, Alan?’ she said with a smile. ‘Jake’s busy with context checks and finds’ level and I need a man I can trust.’

  Alan took the Sharpie and the plastic bags that she held out to him. A peace offering, of sorts.

  Shortly before noon, Alan looked up from the list he was compiling as Harriet carefully removed some of the many bones of the left hand, one by one. It was a meticulous process and they were chatting quietly about what they were doing as they worked. He glanced at the cameraman who was standing by the shelter flap and noticed there was something odd. The normal lens for GVs in the shelter was quite short and fat – the equivalent of a 35mm on a SLR. But this time the camera was fitted with something much longer. Frank was leaning close to the cameraman, whispering in his ear, while clearly pointing down to Alan and Harriet. Suddenly Alan realised what was going on, and a sharp wave of anger overtook him.

  ‘Frank,’ he shouted. ‘That’s a close-up lens. Are you fucking filming us?’

  Of course Frank protested his innocence and said they were only getting GVs, but they both knew he was lying through his teeth. He was up to his old US-style ‘reality’ tricks again. Immediately Alan phoned Weinstein, who promised to check through Frank’s rushes as soon as they returned to London.

  Alan was slightly mollified, but only slightly. Eventually Weinstein convinced him that no harm had been done. And at least he had been able to show Harriet that he wasn’t completely buying into the media circus.

  * * *

  As always, it had taken rather longer to excavate the three skeletons and remove them from the ground than they had originally intended, but by the start of the third week in March Harriet had returned to her lab in Cambridge. Meanwhile, the team at Fursey had been augmented by three new diggers, who had just finished working for the university unit on the long-running Castle Hill excavations in Cambridge. They were making good progress, but there was no way they’d be finished in time for the opening ceremony of the new ­visitor centre and museum at Easter. So the temporary car park would continue to be in use, as before.

  Alan had tried to phone Tricia a couple of times, but her phone was always turned off. Presumably, he thought, she must be filming. Eventually she did make contact by email and he was right: filming had started, as their executive producer had managed to raise money from a large foundation in the States. Excitedly she told him that it was going out live every day on 2-Much. Alan even caught an episode: the programme was terrible, although Tricia looked good – and very pretty. As he watched her on his cheap TV at home, Alan realised he was looking at her much as he would a gorgeous fashion model on the catwalk. She had become commoditised; she was now an item, not a person. Strangely, he found he accepted this, largely because she probably did, too. Of course, he couldn’t be absolutely certain, but there was no hint of regret in her voice as she told him about their im­mediate plans. All he could detect was enthusiasm for the future, rather than regret for the past. They were about to head over to Ireland for three weeks filming in and around Dublin. So presumably, Alan thought, the programme’s main theme had changed, as he wasn’t aware there were many Roman women, let alone Romans, across the Irish Sea. They must have found yet another sponsor.

  * * *

  To Alan’s surprise, the following day the Irish theme was repeated. It was the last Monday morning in March and Alan returned to the site after a rare weekend off for him and the other excavators. The visitors hadn’t liked it, but the team had been getting very tired, as the split-shift system they’d been working hadn’t proved a great success.

  The two-day break, however, was a success and morale was high. People were returning to the trenches carrying their tools and equipment for the day, when they were stopped dead in their tracks by Kaylee’s cry. She didn’t so much call out as squeak.

  Everyone stood still. Kaylee had lifted up the piece of plastic sheeting that covered the empty Grave 2. Beneath it was a wilted bunch of something that looked like clover, plus four red roses. A liquid had been poured over the flowers and it stained the grave floor beneath. Kaylee touched it, then sniffed her fingers.

  ‘Smells like wine to me.’

  There was a note tied to the bunch of wilted leaves. She read it out. ‘Shamrock from Holy Ireland. Picked 17 March’.

  ‘Bloody Hell,’ Alan said softly, ‘That’s St Patrick’s Day. Looks like we’ve been visited by a bunch of religious nutters.’

  ‘Makes a change from the New Agers,’ Jake muttered, as he looked down.

  Like Alan, he, too, had worked on henge sites where they’d arrive in on Monday mornings to find little gifts to the ‘gods’, and mini-shrines placed quite openly out in the trenches and on spoil heaps. But they only got truly annoyed by burnt offerings, as these could contaminate ­radiocarbon dates.

  In general, Alan tended to be relaxed about such things. OK, he thought they were stupid irritations, but at the same time they were fairly harmless. But this time, despite his dismissal of the hysteria surrounding the Cripps Curse, this felt more focused. The timing was more than coincidental and all his instincts told him it wasn’t spontaneous. Someone was behind it.

  * * *

  Two days later, Alan found himself sitting on the monks’ night stairs on the southern side of the church ruins. The cloister and most of the other monastic buildings had been completely robbed after the Dissolution, but this part of Fursey Abbey had survived quite well. It was a peaceful spot where Alan often came during his lunch break to enjoy the increasing warmth of the spring sunshine. As he munched on a homemade pork pie he’d bought at the village butcher’s, he was startled to see Candice hurrying by carrying a full black bin liner. She saw Alan.

  ‘Morning, Candice,’ he called out. ‘You’re looking a bit flustered?’

  She stopped. He could see she wanted to talk.

  ‘It’s these blinking offerings that people feel they must leave behind.’

  She held the bag open and Alan peered in. There were several home-made palm-leaf and twig crosses, and many faded flowers, some with stems wrapped in tinfoil. At the top lay what Alan now recognised as a bunch of shamrock.

  ‘Ah, shamrock …’ He pulled it out. ‘We had a bunch like this placed in a grave in Trench 2, on Monday. Must have been left there over the weekend, when we’d all left site.’ He’d almost said ‘by a loony’, but remembered that her husband John was a devout Christian.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. We should have kept a closer watch—’

  ‘No, don’t worry about it. These things do happen. But the Irish thing’s a bit odd, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not like we’re near Dublin.’

  ‘You’re right. And the abbey was inspired by the Rule of St Benedict, not St Patrick.’

  ‘So you’ve found more than one, have you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she paused. ‘Yes, we have. Of course we’ve always had one or two offerings placed on the altar stone and sometimes people ask if they can do it. Often it’s when a child dies. So we always say yes.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s the least we can do, really.’

  ‘But the shamrock, when did that start?’

  ‘Very recently. In fact, the number of offerings has increased massively over the past month. And the shamrock
started appearing at about the same time.’

  ‘What, from the first week in March?’

  ‘Yes.’ She frowned, trying to recall. ‘About then, but certainly no earlier. Everyone here has put it down to the increased visitor numbers and the television. I suppose you could see it as the downside of popularity.’

  ‘It’s better than bombs, I suppose.’

  She laughed. ‘Quite. But John reckons the shamrock is all about St Fursey.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right.’ Alan had done a little research on Google, after John and the Fen dean had had their trenchside discussion. ‘Fursey came from Ireland, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, and John tells me the three lobes of the shamrock leaf were used by St Patrick to symbolise the Holy Trinity.’

  After she had left, Alan took out his newly-acquired iPad and checked out some of the local evangelical Christian websites. He was amazed: it was obviously a very active scene, with a number of one-off events planned in the lead-up to Easter. There was even a blog and chat room devoted to developing the links established by the Blessed St Fursey between East Anglia and Mother Ireland. Fursey featured prominently. And everything oozed gobbets of well-meaning love. Alan couldn’t help it: he cringed as he hurriedly flipped the cover shut.

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, Alan was working in the Portakabin trying to update and check the correlation of the small finds and contexts registers when his computer beeped. Anything was better than what he was doing now, so he clicked across to the project’s email account. There was one new message from a Dr Hilary Porter, of the Department of Geology, at Saltaire University. Alan glanced through it. He felt for her, as he’d been in the same boat many times in his life: it was near the end of the financial year and she had been checking through her invoices. The one she’d issued to Fursey had been sent to Stan last year, and it hadn’t been paid. Her direct number was at the end of the email. Alan rang it.

  Alan thought her name rang bells with him, and it did: she had been on the advisory panel for the first Forensic Archaeology course, way back in 1996. In those days she was more interested in pedogenesis and the decay of sedimentary rocks, but Alan learnt that after she’d had three children she had found something part-time to do that also paid her reasonable money.

  ‘Unless,’ Alan joked, ‘you have clients like us.’

  ‘I rather guessed Stan wasn’t too keen on administration. I remember handing him my report, which included the invoice, in the pub at Fursey—’

  ‘The Cripps Arms?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the one. Anyhow, he’d obviously had a few beers. He wasn’t drunk, mind, but merry. I’d have said he was distinctly merry.’

  It was like someone behind him had fired a shotgun. He snapped to attention. He’d never before heard anyone at Fursey mention Stan’s drinking.

  ‘When was that? Can you remember?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got the invoice here and I wrote it out before I left home that morning.’ There was a brief pause. ‘Let’s see … Yes, here it is: 7 October.’

  ‘Blimey …’

  Alan was lost for words. That was the day before Lane recovered Stan’s body from the river. For a moment he found himself wondering about the suicide theory. But no, that was ridiculous. A couple of beers aren’t the same as half a bottle of whisky. He was brought back to reality by Dr Porter.

  ‘Sorry, Alan, I missed that?’

  Alan briefly explained about Stan’s death. Dr Porter had already heard about it, and was suitably sympathetic. At the end of his account Alan had to ask the question that had been on his mind throughout their conversation.

  ‘I don’t want to sound callous, but did you manage to identify the source of the building stone used here at Fursey?’

  ‘So my report got lost, as well as the invoice?’

  ‘It would seem so, yes.’

  ‘I’ll print you off another one. But, yes. And it’s what both Stan and I had expected: it’s most probably from one of the quarries at Barnack – near Stamford,’ she added by way of explanation. Not that any was needed: the quarries were well known.

  ‘So that would explain some of the masons’ marks, which Stan mentions in his draft report.’

  ‘Yes, he let me use them in my report. They’re identical to ones found in Ely Cathedral. There must have been a thriving trade in good building stone across the medieval Fens.’

  Then Alan had another thought. ‘Did all the samples Stan sent you come from around the abbey?’

  ‘Well, they must have done. That’s all there is at Fursey. Or am I wrong?’

  ‘He didn’t happen to mention, for instance, if any came from lower-lying land?’

  There was a pause, then she laughed. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m being so dense.’ He could hear her shuffling through papers. ‘Yes, you’re right: he did mention that three samples came from a dyke …’

  ‘The Engine Drain?’ Alan suggested.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. It was the Engine Drain.’

  Suddenly Alan could see light at the end of a long and very black tunnel. The high benchmark, the low-lying monastic stonework. It would seem Fursey Abbey was not as tightly confined to its island as was often supposed.

  ‘Thank you so much, Hilary. And have no fear; I’ll write you out a cheque here and now. And if you’ll agree, I might ask you to identify some more samples, when, that is, we come across them in the future.’

  * * *

  Alan was never much good at organising set-piece revelations on his own. Those revelatory library scenes in Agatha Christie didn’t just happen by magic. They had to be organised. Normally, he liked to have somebody else, preferably his brother Grahame to help him out. But now there was nobody he could turn to. And besides, as staged deceptions went, it was hardly a big one. Not exactly the run-up to D-Day.

  He’d had the idea the day he’d spoken to Hilary Porter about the building stone IDs. He had been tidying up the clutter on his desk after his phone call when an email arrived from Candice. She wanted to arrange a quick meeting at the Abbey Farmhouse after work the following day with Alan, Barty, Sebastian and John Cripps. A guest at the meeting would be Dean Jason – the Fen dean. The ostensible purpose of the small gathering was to introduce everyone to the new visitor services manager, who had just been appointed by ­Historic Projects Management to oversee Fursey.

  The email went on to explain that Candice also wanted to use the meeting to float a proposal that John and the Fen dean had hatched together. In a personal PS to Alan, she mentioned that visitor numbers were starting to tail off and she was keen to give them a boost over the Easter holiday, and this seemed just the scheme to do it. But she didn’t mention what was being suggested. Alan could hazard a guess and he might even have considered skipping the meeting, but then his own idea had occurred to him. And this time he wouldn’t screw up, like he had that night of the dinner. No, this time he’d be far better prepared. Which was why he now found himself driving the Fourtrak up the short drive to the Abbey Farmhouse.

  As he got out and locked the door behind him he found he was looking up at that bedroom window on the first floor. The memories did return, but now they were in monochrome, and his pulse barely quickened. Still, it had been a great night and Tricia was now doing what she had always wanted. He smiled: would that all his girlfriends were that straightforward – and forgiving.

  As he approached the house, Candice was standing by the open front door. She greeted him with a kiss on both cheeks, and ushered him into the now familiar ochre-painted dining room, just off the front hall.

  When she had handed Alan a cup of coffee, she sat down and began the meeting. Alan noted she was very much in charge, but he couldn’t help noticing that she was also the person who served him with coffee. None of the men present could possibly have done it; this was still a very conventional family. Business was what men did in such circles. That set him thinking: so had that narrowed the field? Maybe it had. Alan allowed himself a moment of optimism.r />
  Candice began by saying a few words about Joe Thorey’s death. She then introduced Steve Grant, who would be starting work at Fursey from the first week of April. This would give him a three-week run-up to the events of Easter and the start of the main, summer tourism season. His CV looked impressive. He was 34 and had a good degree in Leisure and Tourism from Southport, followed by a short stint as a volunteer at the Tower of London, before moving to HPM and the Water World historical theme park. He started work there as a tour guide, but in just four years he was running the shop and, shortly after that, was put in charge of events planning. The founder and CEO of HPM, Blake Lonsdale, had provided a glowing testimonial.

  Steve Grant was a good-looking, slim young man with neat short hair and a fashionable, but not, Alan noted, flashy, suit, which he wore without a tie. He had an easy-going manner and everybody in the room took to him instantly. Even Alan, who had a profound dislike of suits and the people who wore them, couldn’t help being charmed by the warmth of his smile.

  Candice began by mentioning that she had discussed the scheme she was about to propose with Steve, as she immediately called him, and he had given it his wholehearted approval. As if to back her up, Steve was smiling and nodding as she spoke.

  She explained that the scheme had been ‘dreamed up’, as she put it, by her husband John and his good friend Dean Jason. Alan looked across the table. John and the dean were sitting next to each other wearing almost identical dark suits.

  ‘And I should add,’ the dean chipped in, ‘that although it’s not official, all my colleagues in the cathedral think it a splendid notion, as it appeals to a young demographic and has the enthusiastic support of both the Scouts and the ­Mothers’ Union.’

  Wow, Alan thought, they were just the organisations to get everyone’s juices squirting. But his face was a rigid mask of polite interest.

  She went on to outline how, after their visit to Fursey during the live shoot, Alan had told them about the early date for the foundation of Fursey and how it probably predated that of Ely by one or even two generations. Alan hated the glib way non-specialists merge history and archaeology. He still had big misgivings about the dating of this supposed ‘event’.