Alan spent the weekend fobbing off the concerns of the locals and further placating Lane. He was aware that he was coming across as dismissive, ungracious even, but he had no choice. Clark reported back to him on the Sunday. The fire had destroyed nearly everything, but two boxes of books on his bedroom floor had escaped unharmed. The boxes were charred, but the books inside were untouched. According to Officer Clark, books were almost fireproof, especially in boxes rather than on shelves. It was a small consolation, but better than nothing.
By Monday, Alan was back to old habits. He wasn’t ready to properly consider Ali’s involvement in the fire; it was too raw, too upsetting. So he threw himself back into his work with renewed intensity. It was his first paid day on the Guthlic’s project and although he’d done a certain amount of background reading at home, he still needed to do more before he went on the site recce the next day. He spent the morning in the Lincoln Historic Environment Records Office, then after lunch drove to Priory Farm.
He walked across the entrance hall to his new office, which was next door to Harriet’s. And as he had promised, Paul had sent him all the maps and plans they had seen with him the previous Friday. It could be a lot worse, he thought, as he looked around. It’s far better than a site hut; it’s warm, dry and well-lit. There were ample bookshelves and a modern-looking computer, which was hooked up to the PFC network. Yes, it could have been a lot worse.
He had planned to have a chat and a coffee with Harriet, but his eye was caught by the Guthlic’s geophysics plot and before he knew it he had drifted over to the table and unrolled it. Automatically his mind had switched into dig director mode and he was planning the location of his first three trenches. An hour later there was a quiet knock on his door. It was Harriet.
‘Fancy a coffee, Alan? I’m brewing up.’
‘Oh yes please, Harry.’ A coffee would go down very well. ‘I’m sorry,’ he continued, ‘I meant to pop in earlier, but got snared by this plan.’
‘It’s going to be good, isn’t it?’ she said, looking down at the graves on the geophys plot.
‘Yes, very. And I think it’s fairly clear where the trenches need to go…’
Alan was thinking about relationships and inter-cutting graves. It was absolutely essential that they work out the sequence correctly, otherwise any claims that some bodies were earlier than others might sound a bit hollow. The more he thought about it, the more he realised that it was going to be a dig where chronology and sequence were all-important.
‘Just looking at the geophys, Alan, makes me think we ought to be able to work out a pretty precise phase plan. Am I right?’
There was real anxiety in the way she asked this. Alan could see she shared his thoughts on chronology, completely.
‘Yes you are, but it’ll take really precise excavation. We can’t afford to have any heave-hoes or passengers on the crew. They’ll have to be good. Do you know the staff here?’
She nodded.
‘I do. And I’ve already earmarked the people we’ll be taking with us. So relax, they’re all good.’
He was about to discuss trench locations, when her coffee machine began beeping.
Harriet’s office was more lived-in and more comfortable than his. She even had three easy chairs, all covered with books and papers, and a coffee table. She cleared two chairs and they sat down. She studied him closely. Alan could tell she was choosing her words carefully.
‘I didn’t get a chance to ask you about it on Friday, but you mentioned you’d worked for Paul earlier?’
‘Yes. A lot earlier and strictly speaking I didn’t work for Paul, as much as with Paul. We were co-directors.’
‘Like us?’ she added brightly.
‘I wish it was. No. We’d set up a contracting partnership in Leicester, as there was a lot of work there at the time. We rented a business unit out in the suburbs. It was cheap and clean, with plenty of space – nothing like as grand as Priory Farm.’
‘That’s interesting. I somehow can’t see Paul setting up a partnership with… with anyone.’
This intrigued Alan.
‘Why’s that?’
‘He doesn’t empathise with people. He reasons and decides, if you know what I mean.’
Then she stopped. Alan could see she felt disloyal: after all she owed her living to Paul.
‘I know what you mean, but I don’t think he doesn’t care. He’s just an extreme pragmatist. That’s what made us such a good team. He spotted that before I did, which I suppose is a kind of empathy in itself.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Halfway through the dig at Flax Hole he suggested that we changed our roles. I became the hands-on field director, and he took over all admin. And I mean all admin. I barely needed to sort out paper clips. It was great, I got to do what I loved without any of the boring stuff.’
‘I’m not entirely sure he did that for your benefit, did he?’
Alan could see that something was bothering Harriet. He gestured to her to continue.
‘From what I understand, that Flax Hole dig was the beginning of the great PFC empire.’
This had never occurred to Alan before. But Harriet was right. It was directly after Flax Hole that Paul’s big contracts started rolling in and he swiftly became a major player in the consulting world.
‘You were a partnership and he just walked away and set up on his own.’
Alan shrugged.
‘I suppose I didn’t want to be tied down.’
‘But did he even offer you the opportunity to come in with him?’
‘No, but that was never the deal.’
Harriet bit her lip. Alan could tell that something was still bugging her.
‘It’s OK, Harry, this is just between you and me.’
‘Yesterday, the minute you mentioned Flax Hole, he just seemed nervous. No, more than nervous. Shifty, I thought.’
‘Did he? I thought he was just putting me in my place, you know, at the bottom of the glorious corporate ladder.’
They shared a smile.
‘Anyway,’ continued Alan, ‘if he does have a guilty conscience let’s use that to our advantage and see if we can squeeze a few more grand out of him for this bloody budget.’
Harriet laughed, and they returned to studying the trench layout.
The next day Alan made his recce visit to St Guthlic’s. He pulled off the single track lane and parked Brutus in the small grass car park. There’d been a funeral recently and the wheelie bin behind the ivy-covered back wall of the sexton’s shed was full of sad, wilting flowers.
He strode briskly across the churchyard and was relieved to see that the grid pegs set out by the geophysics team several weeks earlier were still in place. These were the pegs they had used to tie their survey area onto the Ordnance Survey map and Alan knew it would be essential to make sure that the excavation trenches could, in turn, be accurately tied into the geophysics. He’d been on sites where this had gone wrong – and they were chaotic. So those pegs were very welcome indeed. He counted them and could see without stretching a tape that they had been laid-out on a five metre grid. He pulled out his plan of the churchyard and started spray-painting the line of their first trench on the turf. Then the sun came out and even though it was still mid-winter he could feel the warmth of its rays on his back. He straightened up and admired his surroundings. At last, he was beginning to relax.
He could read the church’s ancient stonework like a book. It had a fine Saxon tower, with distinctive long-and-short work, probably built in the earlier eleventh century. The nave, chancel and both transepts had been largely rebuilt in the earlier fifteenth century, at about the same time the vast tower of the Stump was going up across the fen in Boston. Like Boston, most of the money used to build Guthlic’s probably came from the lucrative trade in wool and textiles that was then transforming so many churches in eastern England. His immediate practical concern, the new toilets, were to be housed in a small Victorian extension built onto the south side of the chancel.
Behind him the gate into the churchyard creaked. Alan looked round sharply. He was feeling jumpy after the fire, but it was only the vicar, accompanied by another man. After they had shaken hands, the Reverend Hilary Anstruther-Purse introduced his companion, who was wearing smart, new, tweedy country clothes, but was clearly not used to them. The man removed a glove to shake hands, but couldn’t find an unbuttoned pocket to put it in. He was rather nervous.
He introduced himself as Alistair Crutchley and offered a handshake so warm and enthusiastic that Alan thought it would take his arm off.
‘Good heavens,’ he said, unable to contain his enthusiasm any further, ‘I’m so glad to have met you, Mr Cadbury! I loved the show you did at Boston Haven. Wasn’t that ship extraordinary? And who would have guessed there’d have been a slaving connection at that early date? Amazing. Quite amazing.’
Alan smiled weakly. He had thoroughly enjoyed the History Hunters excavation at this nearby site, where they had uncovered a seventeenth-century merchant ship. In fact, he would go as far as saying it was one of his favourites. But he really wasn’t in the mood for a star-struck local.
‘So you enjoyed it?’
‘Oh, yes!’ Alistair was smiling even more enthusiastically: ‘I’d say so. It was first-rate. Absolutely first-rate.’
To Alan’s relief, the vicar brought conversation to a halt with the suggestion that perhaps they should look inside the church.
‘Most regrettably,’ he said as he opened the door, ‘we have to keep it locked at all times. We’ve had so much material stolen and we’re so terribly remote. How far’s the Hall, Alistair?’
He pointed towards a large wood across two enormous flat fields, where Alan noted the oilseed rape had been severely checked both by the frosts and by tens of thousands of pigeons, who roosted safely at night in the woods.
‘It’s just behind those trees,’ Alistair said. ‘Sometimes we walk to church in summer and it must take a good twenty minutes, door to door.’
‘And of course the village is even further,’ the vicar added, ‘over a mile away.’
Once inside, they paused, so that Alan could enjoy what lay before them. It was an astonishingly fine building – and in an area famous for its churches. Alan may have had no time or patience for religion, but he could still appreciate the magnificent architecture.
They walked through the transept and into the chancel. The large perpendicular east window had been fitted with vividly-coloured Victorian stained glass. Along its base, ornate Gothic lettering proclaimed: This window has been restored to the Glory of God, anno 1885, by Arthur Alistair Crutchley.
‘My great-great-grandfather,’ Alistair said quietly, as they stared up at the window, through which the morning sunlight was now streaming.
Around them were memorials to other squires of the village, including the late medieval Lords of the Manor of Scoby who had survived into the eighteenth century. This was when they had demolished the old manor house and erected the brand new Hall.
‘I know it’s still rather unfashionable, but I do like Victorian stained glass. Particularly when the sun shines through it, like that. It’s glorious, is it not?’ said the vicar.
He pulled an envelope from his pocket, which he gave to Alan.
‘Here,’ he continued, ‘these are the church keys. Keep them safe, then return them to me or Alistair when the dig’s finished. They’re the second spare set, so we won’t be needing them in the meantime.’
And with that he left by the small door on the south side of the chancel. They watched him go, then Alistair turned to Alan.
‘Funny thing,’ he said, ‘in my father’s day the vicar was never given a key to that door. That was reserved for his – for the squire’s family. He thought vicars must be kept in their place. Very old school.’
‘When did things change?’
‘Fifteen years ago, when father died and I inherited.’ He was more relaxed now. ‘Seemed all wrong somehow. I even handed the gift of the living to the diocese. I mean, why should we – the family – dictate who should be the next vicar, just because AAC said so.’
Alan interrupted him.
‘I’m sorry, what’s AAC?’
Alistair let out a small chuckle. ‘Not what, who.’
Alistair pointed up at the window.
‘Him up there: Arthur Alistair Crutchley. As I was saying, just because AAC had made a fortune in London and had then bought the estate, and with it the living, that didn’t make him any better in the eyes of God. Quite the contrary, I’d have thought.’
Alan was quietly astounded. He’d got this chap completely wrong. When they’d first met, although they were both about the same age, Alistair seemed like he belonged to an earlier generation entirely. He would have expected him to take deference for granted. Yet again, an example of the cultural prejudice that we all carry with us, he thought. As with Alistair, so with Ali – it was just a different set of preconceptions, that’s all.
Back in his office, Alan stacked his rescued books on his shelves. They still smelled strongly of smoke, but he had been assured it would eventually go away. He stood back. It was good, comforting even, to have them back with him.
Alan knew he had a decision to make. He hadn’t started teaching the A-level course yet. All it would take would be a simple phone call to Grant. He could plead pressure of work, goddamit he could even plead the emotional trauma of the fire. But as he stood there, studying the remnants of his library he realised that he would do no such thing. Grant had informed him that twelve Lifers had signed up. The list of student names would be sent over to him in the next couple of days. Twelve men, locked away in that hellhole, wanted to learn and no matter whether Ali was amongst them or not, Alan wouldn’t, couldn’t, let them down. He had stiffened his resolve. He didn’t know it, but lurking behind this altruistic motive was another, a purely self-centred one: Alan wouldn’t stand for bullying. Never had, never would. If the fire had been arson, and if Ali was indeed behind it, then Alan would make sure he was called to account somehow. No matter their past history at Flax Hole; no matter the boy Ali had once been.
He scanned his shelves, searching out inspiration. One of the volumes was the standard work on the Anglo-Saxon settlement of south Lincolnshire, which he removed and took to his desk, where he unpacked his own laptop and opened his A-level lecture files. He worked away for about ten minutes, while munching on a chocolate bar – his lunch that day. He needed more information about Early Saxon cemeteries in the southern Fens, as he thought this could make a good special project for some of his students. Sadly, the book was no real help. Nor was the internet. He got up and knocked on Harriet’s door.
He fully expected Harriet to send him packing, considering her looming deadlines, so he was surprised by her friendly greeting.
‘I’m glad you came, Alan. I was getting so fed up. All I’m doing is ordering database entries by date, size, type and so on. It’s driving me mad.’
Alan also hated that side of their work. But sadly it was part of the digital life. This time other, more archaeological, things were on his mind.
‘Funny you should say that,’ he began, ‘because that chapter you gave me is having the opposite effect. It’s making me think about all sorts of things, like the demise of the Classis Britannica and the start of a new, I suppose we’d call it privatised, marine and coastal economy in Late Antiquity. No wonder there was so much traffic across the Channel and the North Sea.’
‘Yes, that’s what I was starting to think…’
Alan continued – he had the bit between his teeth. ‘I’d always thought that contact was concentrated around the western approaches – places like Tintagel. But no, just as much, maybe even more was happening over here. It’s just that the historical sources don’t discuss it.’
‘And they don’t cover places like Guthlic’s either. No, I’m convinced that site could make a real contribution to the debate…’
‘So can I read the next chapter too? I’m dead keen to see what the osteological evidence tells us about the Anglo-Saxon invasions.’
‘Possibly,’ she smiled, ‘but you’ve also got to suggest a twenty per cent cut in the words.’
‘Great’ he said, ‘I’ll do that, but one good turn deserves another.’
‘Yees…’ she answered with mock doubt.
‘I need to pick your brains. I want some basic info about recent Early Saxon cemetery sites in the Fens and East Midlands.’
‘That’s outside your normal period, isn’t it? I thought the Bronze Age was more your field?’
‘Yes, it is. But I’m trying to find some interesting special subjects for an A-level course I’m about to start teaching.’
At this point there was a knock at her door. Paul entered before Harriet had a chance to respond.
‘Harriet, about your budgetary concerns. St Guthlic’s is a relatively minor project as far as PFC is concerned and as such–’
He stopped short when he saw Alan.
‘I see you’ve brought in reinforcements.’
Alan stepped in, eager to clear up any misunderstanding. If Paul had any residual issues with him, it wasn’t fair for Harriet to get drawn into it.
‘Not at all. I was trying to chase up some information on Pagan Anglo-Saxon burials…’
‘A bit outside your normal field, aren’t they?’ Paul asked.
‘Not in this instance. I’m teaching a part-time A-level course.’
‘Oh really, a WEA evening class?’
Sod it, thought Alan. Now’s as good a time as any.
‘No. At Blackfen Prison, as it happens.’
They both looked at him. Those two words weren’t often spoken at Priory Farm.
‘A course for the warders?’ Harriet asked, breaking the silence.
‘No, it’s for a group of prisoners. They call themselves “The Lifers’ Club”.’
Harriet was astonished.
‘Are you saying they’re all serving life sentences?’
‘I imagine so,’ Alan replied, ‘but we don’t get to find out about each individual prisoner. We’re not permitted to discuss their criminal records. Our job is to reach the men who are there, whatever they’ve done. We take them as we find them.’
‘How very noble of you,’ said Paul. ‘So long as it doesn’t interfere with your work schedule here I suppose I can allow it. Now if you’ll excuse us…’
Paul waved the budget papers at Alan, shooing him out of the door.
Half an hour later Alan was still staring at his computer screen. The title ‘Lecture One’ stared back at him, followed by a page of blank space. There was a knock at the door. It was Harriet.
‘What on earth was that all about with Paul?’ she asked.
‘I think he suspects we’re ganging up on him,’ said Alan. ‘I forgot he can be a bit paranoid like that.’
‘It’s not such a bad idea,’ said Harriet. ‘We could lock him up with the maggots in the BCA until he gives us a radiocarbon dating budget that is actually connected to reality.’
Alan shared a conspiratorial grin.
Harriet stepped forward and placed a folder on his desk.
‘Anyway, I had a quick look through some old papers. Will this do for your A-level students?’
Alan liked the fact that she was so straightforward about it. They wanted to learn, and so as far as she was concerned, they were just students. Not criminals.
Alan opened the folder. It was just what he wanted: concise and to the point and everything tabulated: DNA estimates for Saxon incursions, evidence for new burial rites. The lot. As he flicked through he noticed that Harriet was sniffing the air and frowning.
‘Alan, you old rogue, have you been having a crafty cigarette?’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Well, there’s a distinct smell of burning.’
‘I know. It’s the books. My house burnt down on Friday afternoon. These are the only ones that made it out alive.’
Harriet was astonished. She stood there, like a caricature, eyes round and mouth open.
‘But Alan, that’s terrible!’
‘It was an electrical fault, happens all the time apparently.’
‘And are you insured?’
‘Yes, thank heavens, I am.’
‘And are they being difficult?’
‘No, they’re not. Actually they’re being very helpful.’
‘And where are you staying now?’
‘At the pub next door. It’s fine.’
She listened to this at first anxiously, then with a look of exasperation.
‘Alan,’ she said in a tone of absolute authority, ‘don’t be so utterly ridiculous. You can’t possibly co-direct an important dig from a room above a pub. The idea’s quite absurd. No, I have a perfectly good spare room at my place in Mavis Startby. You will come and stay with me.’
And that was that.
Alan spent the rest of the day assembling Harriet’s research file into a coherent lecture, adding his own personal touches here and there. The last thing he wanted to do was come across as lazy or fake. Just as he was clearing his desk, there was the familiar ping of a new email arriving. He went to his inbox: it was from Blackfen Prison. Student register. He opened the attachment. And there it was, staring out at him from the grid of the spreadsheet: Student number 8. Prisoner number 2957. Kabul, Ali.