The next day dawned bright and sunny. Alan checked his watch, yes it was Saturday. He put on his only suit and a borrowed tie from Grahame. He hurried across to the table where he spotted some coffee in the jug and poured it into a mug. Grahame was horrified.
‘But it’ll be icy cold!’
Alan shook his head.
‘No, delicious,’ he mumbled as he hastily buttered a Marmite sandwich. ‘Must dash.’ He slapped Grahame on the shoulder and hurried from the room.
The drive across the Fens to Scoby seemed interminable, with big hold-ups at roadworks in Spalding. Then he noticed he was almost out of diesel. He arrived at Scoby Church dead on eleven, just as the undertaker’s black van drew up outside the porch.
He slipped quietly into the porch. Alistair was standing there with Claire, waiting. One glance showed him that Alistair had told her everything: she stood up straight, her arm around his waist, whereas he looked tired and dishevelled. Two dark-suited undertakers reverently placed the five black velvet bags on a mahogany bier. Then Alan and Alistair each took a handle and together the four men carried the precious load into the church, with Claire following, behind. Once in the nave, the vicar sprinkled the babies with holy water and pronounced a blessing. Of course, Alan thought, they probably hadn’t been christened, so technically speaking he was breaking the rules. But it was plain that this funeral, like all others, was for the benefit of the living, not the dead. Tears were now running freely down Alistair’s cheeks.
They slowly processed through the nave and into the chancel, where they halted next to the carved Victorian stone lid that once covered Tiny’s grave. It had been lifted off and now rested on two wooden batons. The vicar said a few words, then nodded to Alistair who placed the bags within it, alongside the bones of their mother. He stood up and lowered his head in prayer. Only then did the tears stop flowing.
Noiselessly the vicar withdrew. He realised Alistair needed peace. Claire was the first to speak.
‘We’re so glad you could come, Alan.’
Alan was about to mumble something suitable, when Alistair said,
‘And you were so right, Alan, it’s always best to face up to these things. It’s been difficult, but with Claire’s help,’ Alan could see her arm tighten around her husband’s waist, ‘I think we might achieve closure. Of some sort.’
It was a calming, sobering moment for all of them. Yes, Alan thought, you’ve resolved the horrors of the past and put your demons to rest. Maybe I will one day.
Alan had agreed to meet Indajit at his brother’s farm, later that day. Indajit’s sat nav found it without any trouble, and in true English style they sat down to tea, before getting ready. The morning had left Alan emotionally drained, but now he found himself on edge, wired. The lawyer, on the other hand, made no effort to conceal his excitement. Alan reckoned he was actually enjoying himself, which was odd, given what they were about to do.
After tea they went out to one of the secure grain store barns, where Grahame had housed Indajit’s car. They entered through a side door and Grahame turned on the light. Alan was carrying an old fertiliser sack, which was bulging with something.
Alan pulled out the dark blue overalls that PFC issued to all its staff. The previous night, Alan had razor-bladed off the dayglo yellow PFC logo emblazoned across their backs. It had been one of the many small jobs that had stopped him dwelling on what had to be done today. Then, the whole thing had seemed rather unreal. But now it was very different. As he pulled on the sombre overalls Alan felt that reality was starting to strike home. But there was no turning back.
He knew they faced many hazards. Even at the most trivial level, they could be stopped by depot security staff, or by the police. Either way, they’d have trouble explaining what they were up to, although having someone as plausible as Indajit alongside them, would help. But if, if, the Kabuls had guessed Alan’s plans, they both knew the consequences would be far worse: instant and final.
Indajit struggled into his overalls awkwardly. They could see it wasn’t something he’d done before. Smiling, Grahame showed him how to reach into his trousers, through a slot in the overall’s pockets. Indajit was delighted with this. He gave Grahame his phone.
‘Please Grahame, you must take a picture. “Top lawyer in workmen’s overalls”, it could go viral on FaceBook.’ Grahame took the picture. And another with Alan beside him. Both men were smiling hugely. Almost too hugely.
They both got into the grey Fourtrak and headed off towards Leicester. By now it was starting to get dark and the sky had clouded over. After an hour’s steady drive, they pulled into a side street a couple of blocks away from ‘Mehmet’s’, which they could hear was still doing brisk business, despite its imminent closure. By this stage, Indajit’s cheeriness was starting to evaporate. Tension was mounting. They parked in a small side street, waiting for darkness to gather.
Around 11.30 Alan decided it was time to make a quick recce. They pulled away and headed slowly towards the back of Flax Hole Depot, which had now closed for the night. He pulled up in a spot where they could observe the pattern of security patrols. As Indajit had already reported, they were confined to the depot itself, which was brightly floodlit. They waited for two patrols to go by.
‘Right,’ Alan said in a low voice, ‘patrols every half hour. That’s what I’d have expected. So the next one’s due at 12.30.’
‘But we’re not floodlit out here. Surely we’d be OK, wouldn’t we?’ Indajit asked. It was obvious he was keen to get started.
‘No,’ Alan was confident, ‘you’d be surprised how easy it is to spot movement at a distance, especially in low light. All they need is a glint off a shiny mattock blade. That’ll do it. So when the patrol’s out, whatever we’re doing, we’ll freeze. OK?’
They unloaded a mattock, a fork and a road-spike, which Alan tossed over the chain-link security fence. They’d spotted on the recce it wasn’t very secure at this point. Alan soon discovered why, as his boot crunched on an abandoned syringe. Druggies had been using the shrubs inside the fence, as cover. They clambered through a hole in the wire. Alan walked ahead, looking for the remains of the brick wall that had run beside their long-abandoned wet sieve soakaway pits. He soon found it. By this point, the landscaping had given way to scrub, and the older buildings that bounded the depot to the south, were fringed with hawthorn and elder bushes.
‘There it is,’ Alan called under his breath, pointing down at a ridge of bricks and mortar which had been bulldozed almost flat during the landscaping. Another cheap and nasty job, he thought, knowing full well that the landscape contractors ought to have removed the wall’s footings, not just flattened them. They continued for about thirty metres. Then Alan stopped and looked around him.
By now his eyes had become accustomed to the poor light. It took a couple of minutes to get his bearings. He could just make out the shadow of the Victorian warehouse and the main entranceway into the site. Yes, he thought, that’s about right. He tapped Indajit on the shoulder and whispered:
‘Pass me the mattock.’
Indajit handed it to him. But instead of swinging it, Alan used it like a pile-driver, vigorously thumping its head on the dry ground. After about a dozen thumps he stopped.
‘I think one of them’s here. It’s certainly sounds hollow and feels a tiny bit softer.’
‘Hollow?’ Indajit was surprised, ‘I didn’t expect that. Surely it can’t still be an empty hole?’
‘No, it’ll be full all right,’ Alan replied, ‘it’s just the high water content and softer filling can sometimes give a hollow, booming effect. It doesn’t always work, but here the clay’s so heavy, I think it will. Anyhow, there’s only one way to find out…’
Indajit was about to swing the mattock, but Alan stopped him.
‘Too noisy. We’ll use a fork. Much quieter.’
He drove down on the fork with his boot. It went in easily.
‘That’s softer than I thought. Much softer.’
‘Is that significant?’ Indajit asked.
Alan didn’t reply. For a few moments he shone a shaded torch and looked closely at the soil. He turned it off, but continued to finger the soil’s texture, lost in thought.
Then to Indajit’s evident surprise he put a tiny piece in his mouth. He closed his eyes and concentrated hard. There was smooth, buttery clay there. Next his tongue felt the slight abrasion of silt. Gently his front teeth encountered the grittiness of fine sand; for a bizarre moment it was rather like a wine-taster savouring a fine cabernet sauvignon. Then it was done. He spat it out, wiping his mouth twice on his sleeve. He looked up:
‘Yes, Indajit, it is significant. This stuff is a silty clay loam with a high organic component. That’s precisely what we were sieving. I checked the records carefully last week. So we could be in one of them.’
Indajit was now staring at him wide-eyed:
‘What, in one of the soakaways?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s hope it’s the right one…’ Indajit muttered, as he grimly trod the fork into the ground.
Twenty minutes later they both froze, as the expected security patrol passed in front of the depot building below them, and headed across the lorry park. When it had gone they resumed digging.
It was approaching dawn, and several patrols had been by. It had been slow work in the dark, but they had managed to expose all four sides of the pit and Alan was contemplating moving on to the second one, when his fork went through something soft. He’d felt something similar before, when excavating a Bronze Age field system near Peterborough. In that case, it had been half a soft-fired pottery vessel that lay on the bottom of the ditch. But there was no mistaking that crunchy feeling. A bit like breaking into a huge soft-boiled egg. Alan glanced down. He didn’t want poor Indajit to have too much of a shock.
‘Indajit, are you ready for this?’
The lawyer nodded grimly.
Alan dropped down to his knees and shone his torch. Thinnish bone, but with pronounced muscle scars. He pulled at it hard and turned it over. As he suspected, a dog skull. Probably someone’s pet.
By now they were almost three feet down and the soil was getting much softer. Alan put the fork aside and took hold of the steel road-spike. It was about five feet long, had a curly pig’s tail top and a sharpened point. Indajit looked on, fascinated, as Alan very carefully leant on the pig-tail and the spike sank into the soft ground for about a foot. Then he repeated the process a short distance away. On his eighth attempt he distinctly felt a crunch, about six inches below the surface. He produced a trowel from his back pocket and rapidly dug down.
And, yes, this time it was human. A skull. He was sure of that. Few other large mammal crania are so thin.
‘I think we’ve found her.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’ve felt inside the orbit. The eye-socket. It’s very sharp. Almost certainly female…’ He had turned on a small pen torch which he cupped in one hand.
‘Ah,’ he whispered, ‘what’s this?’ Alan could feel that Indajit wanted to join him, but he gestured to him to stay back.
‘Sorry, Indajit, best not to look too closely. Wait till you’re ready.’
The lawyer nodded silently.
Alan held up a scrap of fabric up to the emerging light of a new day. ‘That’s silk alright. At least they didn’t strip her. I don’t think we need disturb her anymore.’
By now there was a very slight, almost indiscernible smell of putrefaction, which Alan recognised instantly from his time on the farm. Although he said nothing, he was surprised that decay was still so actively under way, after so many years.
As he climbed out of the trench, there was a rustle in the bushes behind them. Immediately Alan made a grab for his mattock. Then they were blinded by four powerful flashlights that cut through the feeble, misty morning light, like so many lasers. The words were chilling, but the voice was familiar.
‘I trust you found what you were looking for?’
Alan tightened his grip on the mattock.
‘Relax, Alan, relax. You’ve nothing to fear. You’ve all proved your point.’
It was Lane. As he spoke, he pointed his flashlight at his three companions, whose blue and white checked baseball caps revealed they were all police officers. Armed police officers, Alan noted. They were anticipating trouble.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Alan said, slightly exasperated, ‘my brother tipped you off, did he?’
‘Yes, he did,’ Lane replied, ‘and quite right too.’
‘Shhh…’ Indajit hissed sharply, pointing towards the depot. They all looked: a security patrol had started its rounds.
‘Kill the lights!’ Alan whispered as loud as he dared.
Suddenly it was dark again. He knew that if they were discovered, Mehmet and Abdul would immediately be alerted. After a couple of minutes, the danger had passed.
Then Lane bent forward, shining his shaded torch on the ground. ‘So what do we have here?’
‘A female,’ Alan replied, ‘decomposition very advanced, but shreds of silk and probably hair too. If she was buried in 2002 this suggests very acidic soil conditions. In another five to ten years the body would have vanished completely.’
Lane looked at Alan.
‘D’you want to excavate her yourselves?’
Indajit turned to Alan. He shook his head.
‘No, if you don’t mind, Richard. I think we can leave this one to you.’
Then he had a thought.
‘Why not fetch in that woman we met at Saltaire?’
Lane’s brow furrowed as he tried to think back. Then it came to him.
‘Ruth?’ He queried.
‘Yes,’ Alan replied, ‘I’ve heard she’s based in Norfolk. This would be right up her street.’
Indajit had stood silently while this was going on. Then he spoke softly.
‘May I spend a few moments with Sofia alone? I think I’m ready now.’
They withdrew up the bank and stood amongst the young trees and mown grass. Two officers remained with Indajit, but they faced away. By now it was bright enough to see clearly. Alan noticed they had unslung their weapons. Indajit knelt alone with his fiancée, his shoulders heaving as he wept. The scene had a quiet dignity. All was silence, only broken by the growing sound of the dawn chorus from birds in the young trees and shrubs around them. Then Indajit wiped his eyes. He looked up.
‘Thank you all. This has meant much to me.’
‘And to me,’ Lane said, walking forward. He shook his hand warmly. ‘Thank you for all your help.’
It was a warm night, but Indajit had begun to shiver. Lane nodded to one of the officers.
‘This gentleman needs a lift home. Make sure he stays warm,’ he paused, ‘and treat him like a celebrity. Because he is one,’ and then as an afterthought, ‘we can take a statement from him later in the morning. And I want two officers stationed outside his house until I personally give you the all clear. Understood?’
‘Yes, sir!’
They stood and watched while Indajit was escorted back to a car.
Then they laid a police reflective jacket over Sofia’s remains and Alan shovelled loose earth onto it. At this stage they still needed to hide what they had been doing from casual prying eyes. An officer stayed behind to guard her, crouching down out of sight. Meanwhile the rest of the group headed out through the security fence, before the next security patrol arrived.
Alan drove to the Central Police Station to have a short statement taken, while the reinforcements Lane had summoned, continued to arrive. While they were waiting, they discussed what to do next. They were both keen to have Paul picked up, as they were convinced he had to have known about Sofia’s burial, even if he didn’t organise it himself – which he almost certainly must have done: only an archaeologist who’d worked on that site would have known about those pits.
‘But even so,’ Lane responded, ‘he’s still just an accessory after the fact. He’s not likely to run away and I don’t think he’s the brains behind all this. That person is Mehmet, we’ve got to catch the bastard. And Abdul.’
As he said the last words there was a ruthlessness in his voice that Alan hadn’t heard before.
‘So what’s the plan, Richard? I don’t think we’ve got much time.’
‘No, we certainly don’t. I’ve already called in the team I’d reserved for this job.’
‘Oh no,’Alan broke in, ‘surely not Drugs Squad heavies?’
‘Certainly not.’ Lane looked a little peeved at this. ‘This is Leicestershire and we’ll use our own force, if you don’t mind.’
‘I’m sorry…’
But he was relieved, nonetheless. Then he had another thought:
‘Richard, shouldn’t we be keeping more of an eye on Priory Farm? Your single undercover man wouldn’t stand much of a chance if things got nasty there, would he?’
‘Don’t worry, Alan,’ Lane replied, ‘I’ve already thought of that. I sent two men round there an hour ago.’
For a moment Alan thought about the implications. He was certain they’d stay round the front and not venture into the hawthorn thicket at the rear of the hangar. Still, he’d done everything he could. Now it was in the hands of fate.