The day after his sad afternoon at Scoby Hall, Alan found himself standing on the rough ground outside Paul’s office window, waiting for the JCB to turn up. He’d done everything he could to make the job run smoothly. By now, the Impingham trial trenches were starting to be interesting, and he didn’t want to be away from them for too long. Of course Lane’s advice was still fresh in his mind. But could he really do it? Leave everything behind and stand aside until it was all over? Twice before he’d been faced with similar situations, when managers had told him to return to the office and complete paperwork, and leave the survey to others. And in both cases he had ignored them. The first time it happened he had found a buried late Ice Age island, surrounded by intact Mesolithic settlements. The second, he was sacked. So which was it to be, now? For Alan, it was a no-brainer.
Then it started to rain, and he took shelter in the porch of the Out Store, feeling increasingly fed up. He had booked the digger himself, and the man he spoke to at the AK Plant depot in Leicester, swore blind it would be at Priory Farm sharp at eight this morning.
By half-past ten the JCB still hadn’t arrived, and Alan decided to go indoors and get a warm mug of coffee. Normally, he’d have phoned AK Plant and told them what he thought of them, but as things were now, he most certainly didn’t want to antagonise Paul. But around eleven, his patience ran out. He was just about to pull the mobile from inside his waterproof, when there was a sharp rap from Paul’s office window. Alan looked up. The window opened, and Paul shouted out.
‘Alan, I’ve just had Leicester on the phone. The digger’s been delayed on its previous job, and they don’t have another one to spare. If he came early on Saturday, could you get everything done before the builders arrive? It shouldn’t take more than a couple of days, at the very outside, should it?’
‘They still due here Monday morning?’ Alan asked, knowing the answer.
‘Yes, they’ve also just rung and confirmed. I know it’s tight, but could you get it done? Please say yes.’
Alan sighed. He didn’t particularly want to work over the weekend. Normally he would have been furious at this, but now he checked his anger: he had to stay friendly with Paul.
‘Well I’ll have to, won’t I? And I’m sure we can come to some arrangement if there’s still a bit to finish on Monday. I’ve never met builders yet, who started precisely when they said they would. They never do…’
Paul smiled broadly and gave him a thumbs-up.
‘Thanks, Alan, I really do appreciate that.’
Then he closed the window.
The rain had passed over by lunchtime. Alan was driving the PFC van in warm sunshine. He was heading towards Impingham and munching on one of Harriet’s haslet salad sandwiches. Their first trial trenches in the park had demonstrated that an area of disturbance outside the deserted village earthworks was certainly medieval, but what it was, and why it was there, was still a mystery.
Once on site, he discussed the various problems with Steve and they laid out a couple of new trenches. Then he drove back to Harriet’s. On his way home it hit him. He’d been so furious with Paul that his weekend plans had entirely slipped his mind. He’d have to cancel Whitby. Lane wouldn’t be happy. And neither would Harriet.
When he walked into the kitchen he found her deeply immersed on an internet site which detailed the hidden treasures of Mount Grace. Nothing for it but to cut to the chase.
Alan felt terrible. He was starting to explain that the digger had been delayed on another job and he’d have to work over the weekend. Then he stopped. He was getting fed up. Why was it always him who had to compromise, when other people changed pre-arranged plans? He vented this frustration on Harriet.
‘Oh, bugger Paul,’ he said. ‘He wants me to watch the digger at Priory Farm on Saturday.’
‘I thought it was meant to arrive today?’
‘It was. But you know what AK Plant are like. They’ve put it off until Saturday. But isn’t that bloody typical of Paul? He’s got the knack of screwing-up other people’s lives, but never his own. I don’t suppose he thought for one minute he could do the bloody job himself.’
To his surprise Harriet defended the man.
‘Well hardly. He’s employed you to do it for him, hasn’t he?’
‘I suppose so.’
That didn’t make him feel any better, either.
Then Harriet asked, ‘And who are you employing in your budget to help you? Surely you can ask someone at Impingham. Watching a digger isn’t exactly difficult, is it?’
Alan thought for a moment.
‘D’you mean Steve? You reckon he’d do it?’
‘Well, you won’t know till you ask him, will you?’
Steve was already grateful to Alan for giving him work in the first place, and when he received his phone call, he sounded perfectly willing. He hadn’t got anything special planned for the weekend and he could always use the overtime. So he agreed.
Problem solved.
Alan had booked them into the Black Horse and Dragon, at Whitby, for the Friday and Saturday nights. They had originally intended to set out bright and early the following morning. But their plans didn’t work out, and they eventually found themselves heading north on the A16, shortly before noon. After a bite of lunch at Louth, and a pleasant afternoon drive through the Lincolnshire Wolds, they crossed the Humber Bridge and found themselves in Yorkshire, in time for a farmhouse cream tea on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors. The further north they drove, the more Alan should have unwound. But, if anything, he was getting more anxious.
They spent Saturday around the old town, visiting the famous Abbey ruins, and paying homage to the spot where Count Dracula had arrived in England. In the afternoon Harriet took him to the parish church, which is one of the most charming in Britain, with very evocative models of lost ships and a fabulous semi-domestic eighteenth-century interior. It was a unique and magical place. But Alan was having trouble connecting. It was as if he was a third visitor, a CCTV camera, observing himself and Harriet enjoying the sights of Whitby. And he was doing quite well. At times he’d be enthusiastic, but not too much, and he didn’t think that Harriet realised it was an act; that his mind, his subconscious, was elsewhere. The more he thought about it, the more he realised that their ‘escape’ was going to be nothing of the sort. Quite the opposite, in fact.
It was dawn on Sunday morning. The first hints of light were visible through a chink in their curtains. Alan lay staring up at the ceiling, while seagulls called out in the harbour. He rolled over, so as not to wake Harriet, who was sleeping deeply beside him. He should have been feeling relaxed and at ease with life. But no. Instead he was knotted up and sweating from every pore. He had slept fitfully, on and off all night, but never for more than fifteen minutes. He glanced down, for the hundredth time, at his watch. Far too bloody early to wake Harriet.
He’d hoped this break would let him relax, but it hadn’t. It’d had the opposite effect. He knew that if he’d stayed in the Fens, at least he could have kept watch on the world. His mind was always working, but so were his eyes and if anything they were just as useful. Up here the views were gorgeous, but he wasn’t after views. He was after connections. Links. Something or some things that connected an exploding Land Rover, to Ali in prison, pieces of modern human bone and people who wanted him out of the way. He was seeking motives too. What was it that drove people to murder, or attempt murder? Money? Fear? Or worst of all, control, because that never stopped.
But he also knew they had needed to get away. Apart from anything else, the tension surrounding Paul’s dealings at PFC was getting to Harriet. He could see that. And before they came north it had been getting worse, daily. He looked down at her sleeping face. At least, he thought, she’d had a good night’s sleep.
He slipped silently out of bed and pulled on his jeans. Down by the harbour, the big three-masted sailing ship was getting ready for another day as a static tourist attraction. The crew were loading supplies and scrubbing the decks. It was good to see, and it took his mind off his own problems, but only for a few minutes.
Half an hour later, he climbed the stairs back to their room. When he arrived, Harriet was sitting up in bed. The kettle had boiled, and the tea was brewing in the pot on her bedside table.
‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked.
‘Down to the harbour. I fancied some air.’
‘You feeling better, now?’
‘Why?’
‘You were on edge yesterday. You must try to relax, Alan. We’re supposed to be on holiday…’
‘I’m so sorry, Harry. I’ll be better today, I promise. Honest.’
She looked at him, obviously uncertain whether she agreed.
‘Well. Whatever happens, we must enjoy Mount Grace. I’m so looking forward to it.’
While she was speaking, Alan had given himself a mental kicking. He couldn’t go on like this. It simply wasn’t fair. Tired or not, he was determined they would both have a good time. And to hell with Paul, to hell with Mehmet and with Kevin, Stu, Darren and the rest of them. He was damned if he’d let them spoil their holiday.
So he ate a huge breakfast: three whole kippers, then bacon and eggs.
The Carthusian church at Mount Grace is the best preserved in Britain. And the ruins of the monastery buildings around it were basking in the late May afternoon sunshine.
A light, but chill breeze began to blow, after they’d been there an hour or so, and they decided to escape it in the reconstructed monk’s cell in the north range of the Great Cloister. Harriet had just returned from the walled garden, where she’d been noting down herbs. They were upstairs, on the first floor, when his phone rang.
Harriet looked at him, as if to ask who’s calling. He glanced down at the screen. Despite himself, despite his anxieties, he felt a quick surge of adrenalin. Something must have happened. He did his best to mask his excitement as he spoke to Harriet.
‘It’s Paul.’
‘Oh no. That’s all we bloody need…’
‘I’ll get him to call back later,’ he whispered as he pressed the green button.
‘Alan,’ Paul’s voice was urgent, ‘there’s been a terrible accident. The trench caved in and Steve has been killed.’
Alan leant against the wall, gripped by a deep sense of foreboding.
‘How did it happen?’
‘They don’t know for sure, but apparently the trench collapsed into an old brick-lined cistern. It was full of water. Anyhow, the police are there now, poking around. They phoned me a few minutes ago at the BM…’
‘The British Museum?’
What on earth, Alan wondered, was he doing there on a Sunday?
‘Yes.’ Paul’s veneer of concern had slipped. He now sounded irritable: ‘Yes, the British Museum. I’m now at Kings Cross, right, waiting for a train. I’ll be there in just over a couple of hours, if all goes to plan. Where are you?’
‘North Yorkshire. I’ll leave at once.’
Suddenly Alan was eighteen again, watching as paramedics carried his father to the helicopter, leaving a thin trail of blood behind them. He could picture the scene at Priory Farm. He’d come across those big old brick cisterns – all the brickwork out-of-sight below ground and often jerry-built. For an instant the two images merged in a moment of massive guilt: he should have been driving that tractor, not his elderly Dad. And what the hell was he doing in Yorkshire when he knew things were coming to a head with Paul and PFC?