Brutus bucked wildly, as if the Land Rover was still on active service, in Aden or Cyprus. As a farmer’s son, Alan didn’t mind open, flat landscapes. They were businesslike. OK, not too friendly to songbirds, but there were compensations, he thought, as two huge marsh harriers circled above him, like stern Fen eagles on dawn patrol.
He had a clear run across Dawyck Fen and arrived at Priory Farm early. It was Monday morning, the start of another week. He went straight to his office, turned on his computer and began to organise the Guthlic’s data-set. He always enjoyed this stage of any project, because this was where threads, stories, narratives began to emerge. It was also about sorting out problems. It was what made all the digging worthwhile. Sadly many field archaeologists weren’t like him. They preferred the butch Indiana Jones lifestyle, out there swashbuckling in the trenches.
For Alan, archaeology was about people-ing, about making sense of the past. And that required thought. Lots of it. And most of the thinking took place after the dig itself, now – during the writing-up phase, known in the trade as ‘post-excavation’, ‘post-exc.’ or just ‘P/X’. Post-excavation was when you called in help from a huge range of outside specialists: chemists and botanists, experts on pollen, fleas, medieval shoes or World War II ammunition. And today was the first day of Guthlic’s P/X.
But before they could start approaching any experts, Alan and Harriet had first to organise all the information from the churchyard. A year ago the PFC computer system had crashed, when they had attempted to integrate all site records: graphics, notes, records and even publications. Then Paul had spent a fortune on a new server and numerous software improvements. It had cost well over a hundred thousand. As a result, the PFC system was now far better than anything even the County Council possessed. It had been worth every penny. It was truly state of the art, and Alan loved it.
He had been working for an hour when he heard Harriet enter her office, next door. By then he was desperate for a coffee. As if reading his mind, he heard her fill her coffee machine. He pulled out his mobile and set the alarm for five minutes. He knew if he didn’t do that, the next time he’d look away from his screen would be lunchtime.
His alarm sounded, and he headed round to Harriet’s office. When he entered she was pouring out two mugs of coffee. This was as good a time as any, Alan thought. He produced his sheaf of research papers with a flourish. And also placed a good bottle of red on the table beside her.
Harriet was clearly surprised at the gesture.
‘Alan, what’s this?’
‘You mentioned you were struggling with the landscape contexts of the early burial sites and I had a few notes left over from my PhD, so it didn’t take me long to update them. Anyhow, they’re yours, for what they’re worth. Oh yes, and something to wash them down with.’
‘There was no need for that.’
‘Yes there was,’ he said with some feeling. ‘I’m aware I can be a bit insensitive, what with us sharing the house, and I wanted you to know that I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me.’
Alan detected the hint of a blush creeping over Harriet’s skin. She bowed her head and flicked through the research notes.
‘Honestly Alan, if you carry on like this it’ll be me who’ll be buying you the wine.’
Alan grinned. His gut instinct was right. This had been the best way to make things up to Harriet for Fishgate, and now all was clearly forgiven.
They sat down and Alan steered the conversation round to P/X. As co-directors their first job was to draw up a detailed P/X plan whose broad timetable they’d already agreed with Paul, at the start of fieldwork. The P/X plan would be their bible for the next few weeks; so they had to get it right.
Alan began.
‘Right, Harry, as I see it, the first phase is the completion of the bones inventory.’
‘That’s done.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Alan was astonished, ‘that was quick. I’d allowed a week at least.’
‘No,’ Harriet replied, ‘young Amy’s a whizz with tablets. She’s found an iPad app which she modified before we started digging. Anyhow, we used it in the field – and it worked.’
‘So no notes?’
‘Yes, a few, but in an old-fashioned notebook and not on loose context sheets. So they won’t get lost.’
Alan was impressed.
‘Right,’ he went on, ‘so I can tick off human bones. What else was there?’
Harriet looked across at her screen, which she swivelled to face them.
‘Er… not much. A few coffin nails, handles, one eighteenth-century nameplate, not in situ, and a few bits and pieces of pottery, including that half saucer you found. Not much to write home about really.’
‘And how long to catalogue?’
‘Done. We did it on Friday morning, while you were clearing up on site. So now Amy’s putting the finishing touches to the Sample Register.’
‘Blimey, you two have been efficient. We should work together more often.’
‘Possibly,’ she said, with a grin.
Alan took this as a good sign and pressed on.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘so now you’re both doing the full study…’
‘Yes, pathology, osteometrics. Everything.’
‘And how long will that take?’
‘We’ll try to get it done by Easter.’
Alan noted this. Then he looked up.
‘OK, it’s my turn now. I reckon it’ll take a couple of days for me to complete the sections and plans master catalogue. Then I’ll start digitising. Is there any chance Amy could give me a hand?’
Harriet shook her head.
‘I don’t think so, Alan, some of those skellies are going to need a very careful going-over. I can’t see her having time for anything else, until at least Easter.’
‘Remind me, when’s that this year?’
Harriet looked at her diary.
‘Good Friday’s April 2nd.’
‘OK. That’s alright. I can do it myself, if I’ve got that long.’
Secretly Alan quite liked doing routine tasks like digitising plans and sections. In the old days he would trace-out the pencil field drawings, in ink. As he worked, he would think about the different layers his pen was following – and how they had formed in the first place. And the same applied to digitising. You needed to understand what you were looking at before you could draw a hard line. That was why he hated the currently fashionable scanned digital images. They were quick and cheap, but they were automatic: no thought went into them; he knew it was why so many errors appeared in modern reports – not that anyone noticed or cared. He was a perfectionist and such sloppiness annoyed him.
Harriet’s voice broke into his thoughts.
‘Alright. So we’ll all be busy until Easter. What, then, do you suggest?’
‘You and Amy will have produced the detailed bone reports, and I’ll have come up with a stratigraphic phase plan, plus a few selected sections, such as they are. With luck, I’ll also have finished the narrative sequence and a detailed context-by-context inventory.’
‘Which will go in the archive and on the web?’
‘I’ll check with the curator, but I assume so. Nobody puts all that stuff in the client’s report these days.’
Harriet now took up the story.
‘So if all that’s done, Easter could be the deadline for deciding which specialists to call in, and how much other stuff we can afford.’
‘What, radiocarbon and stable isotopes, that sort of thing?’
‘Yes…’ She paused, glancing up at the screen where she’d displayed the P/X management accounts. ‘But the finances don’t look too good at this stage, do they? I guess we could run to a couple of C-14 dates?’
Alan shook his head.
‘We’ll need more than that. You’ve got to have more than two, to be statistically reliable.’
‘Yes, Alan,’ she sounded peeved, ‘I’m well aware of that. But if we don’t have the money, we can’t.’
‘Don’t worry about the money right now, let’s just work out what’s essential for the project. We’ll need several C-14 dates and no modern report can do without stable isotopes, either. They’d make all the difference and I guess would help your own research, too.’
‘Yes, they certainly would. There’s so much stuff being written now that’s pure speculation and a site like this can, and should, produce real solid facts. And of course they’d be pure gold for my book – especially if they reveal something unexpected about origins. Maybe migration, that sort of thing, but I don’t see how…’
‘Leave it to me. I’ll speak to Alistair. He wants to help us, and he can afford it. So as soon as the P/X plan is finished, I’ll drive over to Scoby Hall and speak to the man himself.’
She was looking at him with undisguised admiration.
‘If you can, Alan, that sounds great. Really good. Meanwhile, I’ll see if I can squeeze anything else out of Paul.’
Alan gave her a grim smile.
‘Well, good luck with that.’
It was late in the afternoon, and Alan had nearly finished the master catalogue. The way his eyes felt reminded him that one day soon he’d have to buy reading glasses. He was making sure all the files he’d worked on were properly backed-up, when there was a knock on the door, and Harriet came in.
‘Hi Harry,’ he said with a deep sigh of relief, ‘that’s all the bloody cataloguing done. Tomorrow I can start on the real work.’
‘I bet you’re pleased.’ She was looking over his shoulder, smiling broadly. Alan got a heady whiff of expensive perfume. ‘And we’ve been doing OK too. We’ve nearly finished the first skellie.’
‘Anything interesting?’
‘No, not really. Standard early med.: middle-aged man. Natural causes so far as I can tell. Probably worked on the land.’
‘Not surprising for this part of the world.’
‘You’re right. But a big man. Large muscle scars.’
‘Yes,’ Alan broke in, ‘sounds a bit Viking to me…’
She was suitably non-committal. Viking would be a bit late. She wanted some of the bodies in the churchyard, especially those at the base of the tower, to be early and throw light on Anglo-Saxon origins. That’s what would set her book apart from others.
‘Maybe,’ she said doubtfully, before continuing more brightly, ‘anyway, I think we’ve got more pressing concerns at the moment than my research.’
Alan was worried: what had he missed?
‘Really?’
Harriet brandished the bottle of red wine with a grin.
‘All work and no play, right? Let’s go home.’
The meal of steak and kidney pie, followed by sherry trifle, was exactly what Alan needed and afterwards he fell fast asleep on the sofa, while Harriet did the washing-up. She woke him with a gentle shake just before nine. Her black Labrador Alaric (named after the King of the Visigoths, c. 370–410) was fast asleep alongside him, and snoring like an old man.
‘Wake up, Alan, it’s nearly nine and you’ve been out for an hour. If you doze any longer now you won’t sleep tonight.’
She handed him a mug of tea.
‘Thanks, Harriet.’ He felt like he was crawling out of a thick soup. He shook his head, ‘Sorry.… I haven’t been very good company this evening.’
The wine and food had been delicious, but Alan had found it hard to stay focused on the conversation. It wasn’t Harriet’s fault, she had been excited about the work that awaited them and eager to talk it all through. But Alan’s mind kept on drifting back to Ali, to the whole Kabul family. To the implications of his conversation with Lane. All he had wanted to do was help an innocent young lad. But the deeper he dug the more complex the case became. And now he was being sent back to Blackfen on Lane’s orders, essentially to follow the police line of enquiry. Alan felt that he was losing control of the case. Not that he’d had much control over it to begin with…
He forced himself back to the present moment. Harriet was smiling at him, shaking her head in amusement.
‘That’s all right. You were tired. Put me in mind of when I was a graduate student, endlessly popping two-grain caffeine pills.’
‘Same here,’ Alan tailed off.
Harriet sat down beside him, as he sipped his tea. She was the first to break the silence.
‘I had a short session with Paul about our budget this afternoon.’
‘I said I’d talk to Alistair,’ Alan replied, slightly irritated. The last thing he needed – if Paul did indeed think they were ganging up on him – was for Harriet to be putting any pressure on him. Alan knew what Paul was like: he’d just clam up. Then there would be no chance at all of Alan getting Paul’s side of the Flax Hole story. Although, if he was perfectly honest with himself, he had no idea at all about how he was going to broach it.
Harriet’s voice intruded into his thoughts.
‘I know, and I’m grateful for that, Alan,’ she said. ‘But we can’t rely on the charitable donations of rich locals at every dig. It’s important that Paul understands the implications of the decisions he’s making.’
‘Sounds serious.’
‘It’s about the contractors. AK Plant.’
Suddenly Alan was very focused.
‘Yes, I’ve met a couple of their drivers. One of them, Kadir, seemed a nice chap.’
‘Despite the… cultural issues?’
Alan was surprised by this. He wouldn’t have thought Harriet would have been prejudiced about the race of anyone so long as they did a good job.
‘What do you mean, exactly?’
‘The language barrier, it isn’t a problem?’
Alan shrugged.
‘It depends on the man. I’ve worked with Englishmen who couldn’t dig their way out of a wet paper bag. But Kadir’s different. He’s a brilliant driver with an incredibly light touch. I’d much rather have him on site than a monosyllabic local who doesn’t know how to follow changes in texture, let alone levels. And believe me, there are plenty of them.’
Harriet nodded, and pressed on.
‘Anyway, it wasn’t about Kadir specifically. AK Plant overcharge for their services. Not much, but enough. The cost of a good set of radiocarbon tests, anyway.’
‘Really? That surprised me, what with Paul’s insistence on keeping the budget tight.’
‘Exactly. So I did a bit of research and came up with a list of alternative contractors. Cheaper options. Paul wouldn’t even consider it. Also, he said that on no account should I discuss this with you, or allow you access to the contracts file. He implied there were wheels within wheels and it wasn’t just about prices. He even tried to be charming…’
She gave an involuntary shudder, then continued, ‘I know you said he could be a bit paranoid, but that’s ridiculous.’
‘I agree.’
Alan furrowed his brow. Harriet was right, this was more than Paul’s paranoia or need for control.
‘Anyway, I ignored him, obviously. Anyhow, what do you make of this?’
Harriet pulled out a piece of paper. It was a summary of the annual accounts, dating back for the past seven years, back to when Paul established PFC, just after Flax Hole.
Alan squinted at the much-reduced page. The tiny cells of the spreadsheet made his head hurt.
‘I’m sorry, Harry, I’m useless with this sort of thing. What am I looking at exactly?’
Harriet leant over and traced the run of numbers along the columns.
‘So, Paul is overpaying AK Plant, here. But look here, at the end of every quarter, he’s been paid a retainer fee by them that more than covers their fee.’
‘Hang on, so Paul’s paying them… but then they are paying him back with interest as a – charitable donation?’
‘More like a bonus. But whatever, it’s a scam. And there are also these strange funds.’ She pointed down to the Monthly Itemised Notes columns, ‘Look here… and here… Do you know why PFC should have a “Balance Adjustment Fund” or a “Currency Allowance Scheme”?’
Even Alan could see that they looked suspicious.
‘It looks a bit like money laundering, doesn’t it?’
‘I agree. And look here,’ she turned to the second sheet, ‘these funds don’t stay consistent from month to month. They fluctuate hugely…’ she paused, doing a rapid calculation, ‘that Currency fund went up fifty thousand in April, then down twenty in May. So what’s going on?’
Alan sighed deeply. He had suspected as much.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘But whatever it is, I don’t like it.’
The fact that the PFC operating profit was so closely related to the Kabul empire was deeply disturbing, especially in the light of his recent chat with Lane. And worse, if Paul really was funding his company with drugs money, then they were all implicated.
He also realised that Harriet wouldn’t let this lie, as she had a strong sense of moral outrage. But the last thing he needed right now was for her to challenge Paul, and attract the Kabuls’ attention. Even if the arson attack was just a warning – or not an attack at all – she would be treading a very dangerous path.
His thoughts were interrupted when Harriet grasped his arm.
‘Alan,’ she said with real urgency, ‘we’ve got to do something. We can’t let it go on.’
‘No, you’re right, it’s not good. But let’s not rock the boat just yet.’
‘What, so we do nothing?’
‘Oh no. But we don’t just blast away. We’ve got to choose our targets…’
‘But, surely we’ve got enough here?’ She tapped the spreadsheets, making no attempt to hide her growing exasperation. Alan realised he must take the initiative, or lose it for good.
‘No, Harry, think about it, for Christ’s sake! If we report this now, we’ll shut down PFC before we have a chance to process the P/X results. Alistair’s money will vanish and all that hard work…’
‘You can’t let Paul break the law and get away with it, just for the sake of some research statistics.’
Alan was surprised – and pleased – by the vehemence of Harriet’s response. The St Guthlic’s project could boost her academic reputation considerably. But she was more concerned about doing the right thing.
‘No. It’s not just that. But if we call in the police or HMRC now, he’ll be ready for them. More to the point, so will the Kabul’s bent accountants. Can’t you see: you’ve just challenged him? He’s alerted. And we both know that Paul’s got the business savvy to make all this disappear. He’ll explain all those funds. Face it, he’s bound to have a fall-back plan. He’s an expert and we’re just amateurs. We don’t stand a chance until we’ve got better evidence. And believe me, I don’t think that’ll take very long. Honest, I don’t.’
By now Alan was holding both her hands.
‘You’re right, I suppose.’ Harriet was deflated, on the verge of tears. She continued, ‘So, we sit tight, we make him think he’s got away with it?’
‘No, Harry, we don’t just wait for things to happen. We build a case.’
Harriet nodded. There was a long pause. Alan could feel the tension in her clasped hands slacken. She might be calmer, but Alan was more alert than ever. This was all getting far too close to home.
The routine of the Guthlic’s P/X. was rudely interrupted the following Wednesday, when two three-ton hire vans unexpectedly arrived at Priory Farm. The people there had been led to believe that the dig run by their young Project Manager, Simon Cox, had been scheduled to end on Friday, but a second minor disagreement with the farmer had flared up into another row. A big one this time: hence the need to hire two vans, mid-week. It would seem that what Paul had once described as Simon’s superb ‘interpersonal skills’, had been overrated.
That was certainly what Clara, Harriet and her student Amy thought, as they ferried boxes of Guthlic finds and bones, from the In Store, to their various offices. To make space, they moved others temporarily to the Out Store – as there was nowhere else to put them. Alan blundered into this scene of frantic activity and was given a succinct summary of the situation by a red-faced Clara, clutching two long-bone boxes under one arm and a skull box under the other. She was not happy.
‘Yesterday that arrogant little prick Simon lost his rag with the farmer, who told him to fuck off. The next thing I knew he was on his mobile, and bleating at me to hire him two vans to move everything down here today…’
Alan stood listening, his mouth open.
‘So be a lamb, put your teacup down. Go to the In Store and move all the Guthlic soil samples out into the car park. But put them on a couple of pallets, or the mice will get to them. And get a move on, those vans are due off hire by noon.’
Alan jumped to it. The bulk samples had been stored in plastic lidded buckets, some of which were quite old and had become brittle after years of daylight. He picked one up, the handle snapped out of its socket and the bucket hit the tarmac, spilling its contents of wet, slimy mud. He leant down and the stagnant smell hit him full in the face. In a flash he was back at Flax Hole and that waking nightmare.
Only this time he knew what it meant.