FIFTY-SIX

Newark Castle was less a castle these days than a monumental wall that ran along the ridge between the River Trent and the small but pretty public gardens on its other side, whose lush lawns, flowerbeds and bandstand were screened off from the main road by a thick line of trees. Anna had only visited it once before, when she and Uncle Dun had brought a picnic here on a bright summer’s day before harvest had kicked off in earnest. But all she could remember was drinking too much white wine and falling asleep on a grassy bank.

The weather today could hardly have been more different, what with the cold and the drizzle, yet the place was still buzzing. A coachload or two of schoolchildren in weatherproofs were shrieking in competitive delight as they hunted for clues in some kind of Civil War treasure hunt. Anna weaved between them in search of Oliver and his crew. The path down to the river had been roped off for filming. That had to be it. She turned off her mobile in case they were already at it, then slipped beneath the rope and peeked around the wall.

It was indeed them. Even better, they were clearly on a break. Two young men she took to be Oliver’s cameraman and sound engineer were standing beneath a golf umbrella by the river wall, discussing how best to bring into shot a colourful canal boat moored against the far bank, while Oliver was taking shelter beneath a blue canvas canopy while chatting away with a stout, grey-haired woman in a green macintosh, a flat tweed cap and a long rainbow scarf.

He saw Anna and beckoned her over. ‘Bloody rain,’ he said cheerfully, when she joined them. ‘The forecast keeps telling it to stop. But it will not listen.’ He introduced her to his companion, Newark Castle’s custodian and historian Philippa Underhill. ‘We were just talking Brother Simon,’ he said, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘You’ll never guess who they say he was round here.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘They say he was Friar Tuck,’ said Oliver. ‘And that the reason he poisoned King John was in revenge for his having murdered Maid Marian.’

‘It’s only a piece of colour for our tour parties,’ said Philippa, a touch embarrassed. ‘They do so love their Robin Hood. But it’s nonsense, I’m afraid. Mendicant orders like the friars didn’t even exist yet in King John’s time. And Maid Marian was a much later addition to the canon. So even if there were any truth to the larger Robin Hood legend, which frankly I doubt—’

‘Don’t say such things!’ protested Oliver. ‘Certainly not on camera.’ He turned to Anna for support. ‘Weren’t you telling me there really was an outlaw Robin Hood?’

‘I said there may have been,’ said Anna. ‘It still wouldn’t make the stories true. Many are classic folklore, dating from well before his time. And the genuine exploits among them were mostly carried out by people like Roger Godberd and Willikin of the—’ She broke off as half a dozen or so schoolchildren came racing around the side of the castle, screeching in excitement as they searched for planted clues, closely followed by a mortified young teacher apologising profusely as she brought them to heel and then shepherded them away.

‘You were saying?’ prompted Oliver.

Anna shook her head, feeling a little dazed. The world had just shifted on her, like an optical illusion that switched suddenly from one image to another, and then you couldn’t understand how you hadn’t seen it before. ‘We’ve been thinking about it all wrong,’ she muttered, to herself as much as Oliver.

‘Thinking about what all wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ said Anna, for it was too huge just to blurt out. Too huge and too dismaying. ‘I need to check something in the van, that’s all. Give me ten minutes. I’ll be straight back.’ She touched his elbow in apology then set off before he could ask the question she could see already on his lips, hurrying back up the path to the road then along the pavement to the supermarket, her distraction such that she bumped first into a woman pushing a blue pram, then an elderly couple hunched beneath an old black umbrella being tugged this way and that by gusts of wind.

She told herself to focus, but it was hard. Her mind was in turmoil. King John’s failing war against the French, the loss of his baggage train, Brother Simon and his arsenic, Robin Hood and his Merry men, the regency of William Marshal and the silver pennies beneath her uncle’s body – all those distinct pieces now fitting together to form a completely different picture – and fitting so sweetly, too, that it surely had to be the truth. Only one question remained. The question of where. Yet Anna suspected she knew that too, or at least where the answer lay: in those photos on her uncle’s drone, and in the papers she’d taken from his desk, boxed up in the back of the van.

The workmen were still at it when she arrived back in the car park, their jackhammer sending shivers through her feet and filling the air with galaxies of dust that got into her eyes and mouth, so that she put up her hand to clear her throat into it. She threw an irritable glance over her shoulder as she unlocked the van’s rear doors and pulled them open, only to freeze at what she saw. For two men were on their knees inside, their faces hidden by their caps and scarves, yet instantly recognisable all the same.

She turned to run but the weightlifter was too fast. He grabbed her wrist then pulled her violently towards him. She banged her knee painfully against the back bumper as he dragged her inside. Then he threw her to the van floor and clamped a hand over her mouth before anyone could hear her scream.