13

The first thing Lou did on reaching her laptop, was log onto her private server and remove all the photos she’d uploaded there—backing them up to a flash drive instead. Next she changed all the passwords, for something Varian would never guess in a million years. She used her favourite Bible verse, figuring even if he did work out it was Psalm 46:5, he’d never work out which letter was capitalised and which of the numbers she’d spelled out in letters. Or whether verse was a V or a v or a colon.

For the next couple of hours, she and AJ pored over the map Evan had found, comparing it to the photos she and AJ had taken earlier. Evan’s map was surprisingly detailed, with little squares denoting each house. It made her job so much easier.

“And that’s where we found the other body,” AJ said. “That makes ten all together.”

“OK, good. Have you got those housing records?”

“Yeah.” AJ pulled over the laptop. “Easy when you know where to look. Ready?”

She grabbed a pen. “Yep.” As AJ read, she scribbled the occupants’ names onto the chart she’d made. She drew a large red cross onto the chart and tapped her finger on the map. “OK…Now, we know the main fire started here. The fires are in red. The bodies are in blue and were found in these locations, the majority in the church. Where were the bone fragments and other artefacts found?”

AJ picked up a green pen and marked the shoreline. “Along here.”

“That’s nowhere near the graveyard.” She tapped the laptop screen. “There’s no record of a fire. Nothing on the news or anywhere else. You’ll need to check the local public records, newspapers, and so on. Maybe they haven’t gotten around to adding them yet.”

AJ huffed. “Sure. I’ll add it to my incredibly long list.”

“Thanks.” She glanced up as the door opened.

Evan came in carrying a tray. “I thought you could do with some coffee.”

She smiled. “Thank you. It’s going to be a very long night.”

“Can I help?” He set the tray down and studied the chart. “What exactly are you doing?”

“Reconstructing the village. Building a picture of who lived where, what they did for a living and so on.”

His eyebrow quirked upwards like the brows of her favourite TV character. “Fascinating.” He even sounded like him.

She nodded. “It’s what we do. Bring the past to life.”

“And what have you learned?” Evan glanced up from the chart, his piercing gaze boring into her.

Lou touched the chart with her finger. “The main fire started here in the blacksmith’s.”

“Owned by Edward Smith, age forty-six,” AJ added. “Supposedly that spread through the entire village.”

“Fires spread,” Evan said. “Take London in 1666 as an example. One small fire in a bakery in Pudding Lane destroyed half the city.”

“Those were closely built timber houses,” Lou said. “These are stone buildings. What makes this interesting isn’t there wasn’t only that one start point.”

“So it jumped. Fires do that as well. Any firefighter will tell you…”

“No.” She cut him off, shaking her head. “So far, we have found four other incendiary points.” She pointed to the red crosses on the map. “One fire could be accidental. Five most definitely aren’t.” She held Evan’s gaze, noting he didn’t seem surprised by that revelation. “I do this a lot, and my gut tells me that five fires only mean one thing, and I don’t mean lots of candles being knocked over either.”

“Someone set them,” Evan said quietly. “You’re saying this was deliberate arson.”

“Probably to drive out those villagers who were refusing to sell up and leave. Did your great-grandfather leave any other papers about the village? Historical records, or a diary, that kind of thing.”

“Why?” He stepped away from the table, visibly uneasy.

“It would be invaluable if he did. Evan, think about it. If he left a journal or anything we’d have an accurate record of the last days of Abernay.”

“And you’d put all that in your paper, would you?”

She shook her head. “No. Just call it professional curiosity for a little human interest. A bit like that rich woman whose body was found with the gladiator in Pompeii. We can speculate as to why they were together, but no one really knows. Were they lovers and decided to die together? Was he escorting her out of the city and got caught up in the last volcanic blast? Or simply two strangers seeking shelter at the same time? Each explanation is perfectly plausible, but we’ll never know.”

Evan paced across to the window, gazing out at the deepening fog. “I could give you several reasons for those fires.”

“So could I,” AJ chimed in.

“You told me it was a bomb,” Lou said. “Remember? One maybe, but unless you had a huge terrorist cell operating up here in the 1930s, that ain’t gonna fly no more.”

Evan’s face worked madly as he backtracked. “Yes, he left a journal,” he mumbled. “It’s in the library. Along with other files and maps.”

“May I see them?”

“I need time to find it all.” He finally shifted to face her. “I’m not the best at keeping tabs on things.”

She nodded. “Thank you. Anything pertaining to the dam you might find would be incredibly useful.”

“Will tomorrow do?”

“Sure.”

“But you’d prefer having the papers tonight.”

Lou glanced at AJ. “It’d make things easier tomorrow when we dive again, but that’s fine. We can spend tomorrow finishing the mapping of the village and then drop the sonar buoys on Friday.”

Evan frowned. “Sonar? You didn’t mention that before.”

“It’ll give us an accurate 3D image of the bottom of the lake. I also want to do a proper dive into the church crypt.”

Something flickered in Evan’s eyes. “In case there really were smugglers?”

“Yeah. Seriously, I want to check the foundations and wall integrity. Plus there might be something left there of historical value.”

He sighed. “I shall let you get on. See if I can track down some of those files.”

Lou watched him leave. He’d seemed eager to help at one point. Now the opposite was true. Her phone rang, and she grabbed it off her belt. “Hello.”

“Lou, are you busy?”

She walked to the window and drew the heavy curtains across them. “Not for you, Varian. What can I do for you? Although I am surprised you’re not here in person. I didn’t think you trusted me to do anything.”

“We’re busy here,” he stated. “I’ve seen your photos, at least the ones you saved to your servers. I was trying to see the rest but I can’t get in.”

She snarled. “Too right you can’t get in—I changed all the passwords. My server, Varian. How dare you hack into it? Maybe you’ve forgotten what the word private means, but I sure haven’t. That isn’t all of the photos by a long chalk. Oh, and by the way, I won’t be uploading anymore until my work here is completed. Only then will you get a written report. It’s fascinating how much of the village is still relatively intact down there. We’ve made some interesting discoveries—”

“That isn’t why I called.” Varian cut her off sharply. “I wanted to discuss Llaremont.”

She swivelled and waved at AJ, getting his attention, before miming the cutting of her throat. “What about Llaremont?”

“I want those files back.”

Lou laid a finger to her lips and put the phone on speaker, laying it on the table beside her. “What files are those? The Dark Lake ones you gave me? Because right now, I’m using those.”

“Don’t be a smart-aleck,” Varian barked. “It doesn’t become you. You know darn well what files I mean. The Llaremont ones. All your files, photos, and notes have gone. No one has seen them since you left the dig.”

Lou looked deadpan at the phone, not that he could see her. “I see. And that’s my problem because?”

“The computer has been wiped. Around the time you logged onto the company server and changed your passwords. All the backups are missing. As is Monty’s flash drive. I need those files.”

“Well, I didn’t take them,” Lou told him. “I was angry you fired me from the Llaremont dig, yes. More than angry. I stormed out, leaving everything behind. Including my tools and personal belongings. AJ brought those up here for me. I changed my passwords because it was the third Thursday of the month. If you bother to check, I always change my password then. And I changed them just after midnight the day after I left Llaremont, if you bother to check the time. AJ told me the computers crashed, but he said it was much earlier in the evening.”

Varian muttered an expletive.

“And there’s no need to swear at me. Maybe Monty lost the files himself. He’s good at that kind of thing.”

“Monty hasn’t seen them. Those files belong to me.”

Lou shook her head. “In point of fact, they don’t. They’re mine, but I promise you I did not bring them with me from Llaremont.”

“It will take us months to re-catalogue everything. No one knows this dig like you do. It was your project.”

“Exactly what I tried to tell you when you threw me off it,” she snapped. Then she sucked in a deep breath. “But no more. Now it’s your headache, not mine. Have fun attempting to reconstruct all my theories. You wanted me off the project; don’t ask for my help now.”

“If I find you’ve gone behind my back and published anything before Monty has a chance to…”

“You’ll do what, Varian? Sack me? Discredit me?”

“It’ll be the last thing you ever do.” Varian’s voice carried an unmistakable threat. “You will never work in archaeology again.”

Lou sucked in a deep breath. “Well, it’s been nice chatting with you. Now I must get back to work. Reports to write, photos to log, maps to draw. Good night, Varian.” She hung up and leaned heavily on the desk.

AJ eyed her. “It’s kind of funny that he can’t find the files. What will you do?”

“Finish typing them up,” she said, the decision made in a second. “I’ve just been told publishing Llaremont will be the last thing I ever do. So I’m going out with a bang, and he won’t get a chance to fire me, either. How would you like second name on the paper?”

His eyes widened and his face lit up. “Seriously?”

Lou nodded. “Yep. You brought the notes up here for me. He’ll probably fire you, too, when he finds out.”

“Worth it. He’s a sanctimonious old goat at times.”

“Then let’s go out in a blaze of glory,” she challenged. “Dark Lake can wait until tomorrow. I want this paper prepped and ready to be published next week.”

AJ straightened. “You can do that?”

“I have a contact at History Today. Let me give her a call.” She hit the speed dial button on her phone. “Jackie, its Lou Fitzgerald. I have a last minute paper you might be interested in if you have a minute. You’d have world exclusivity on it.”

Less than three minutes later, Lou beamed at AJ and gave a triumphant thumbs-up. “She’ll publish it. As long as it’s on her desk before midnight tomorrow, it’ll make the next edition which comes out on Tuesday.”

AJ grinned. “I’d love to see Varian’s face when he finds out.”

Lou cleared the table, carefully putting away all the Dark Lake maps and documents. “In all honesty, it’ll probably be the last thing either of us see.”

“Like you said, Dr. F. Out with a bang.”

~*~

Having taken several moments to compose himself, Evan set about finding what paperwork he could pertaining to the construction of the dam. His great-grandfather had kept detailed records, and it didn’t take him long to find everything that Lou would need.

Then he strode to the safe and pulled out his great-grandfather’s journal. He opened it to the entry written on the day the village was flooded.

Sept 30th.

It’s done. The fire that began three nights ago is finally out. Despite the ferocity of the blaze, many structures are still intact. There is no point in moving the bodies or attempting a mass burial now. By dawn everything will be buried under several fathoms of water anyway.

About now, the old dam fifty miles away is being blown. Water should reach us in just under an hour.

I wish none of this had been necessary. My job, my calling, is to save lives, not to be responsible for their loss, especially in such appalling circumstances. Maybe it’s fitting I spend the rest of my life caring for the dam here. Caring for the lost, the damned, those I betrayed. The irony is not lost on me.

And I have chosen my words deliberately.

Mabel doesn’t understand why I didn’t fight this. Or why we will be moving back to the manor house. But I am the heir and, therefore, have to take my rightful place, even though it’s the last thing I wish to do. I just hope someday, maybe in eternity, Father will forgive me this last act.

I have written more and sealed it in a watertight box and hidden it in the church crypt. Nowhere else is safe. The reach of CS knows no bounds.

Perhaps one day it will be found and the truth will be told.

Until that point, may God have mercy on my soul and on the souls of those innocents caught up in all this tragedy.

There go the warning sirens. The waters are coming. Just as the fog descends.

It’s quite appropriate. Most of this work was carried out under the cover of the fog, and now the waters roll in the same way.