Alan detected a glint of black ice on the village street as he stood at his kitchen window sipping tea from his Nikon mug. On the table beside him was a packet of chocolate digestives. Two women who helped out at the village shop walked gingerly by on their way to work. Alan glanced down at his watch: 6.45. The weekend starts early for some, he thought. Still, the tea was working its magic, dissipating the after-effects of the night before. He’d got up promptly to resume work on Stan’s notebooks, which had been starting to slip behind schedule. But now he found he was thinking not so much about levels in dykes, as the river into which they drained. And from there it was a short step to Hansworth, fishing and to Joe Thorey. Would he be walking to work today? He very much doubted it.
Across the fields he could faintly hear the sound of an ambulance siren. He started to imagine who might have fallen ill at that hour when his musings were suddenly interrupted by the bright-yellow reflective jackets of two police community support officers who were caught in the headlights of a passing car. Alan guessed they must have walked out of Fursey Hall’s drive, to the right of his cottage, and were heading back into the village.
He took a large bite from a biscuit. Police. So, he thought grimly, maybe the loud-mouthed Joe Thorey hasn’t reappeared.
* * *
The sun was just starting to appear above the open, peaty fields of Padnal Fen away to the south-east, as Alan took the right fork onto the Littleport Road. In the mirror, the ruins of Fursey Abbey Church looked superb in the clean light of morning. Normally he’d have pulled over and taken a photo, but not today, as he’d agreed to meet Jake and the team for a cup of tea and a chat before they began their last full day’s work at White Delphs.
After fifteen minutes the road rose steeply to ascend the huge man-made banks of the River Great Ouse. He remembered driving here with his dad who explained that in the 1950s and ’60s that slope had been the only place where learner drivers taking their test in Littleport could practise handbrake hill starts. For a few hundred yards the road ran parallel to the Kings Lynn–Cambridge railway line, then it came off the bank and veered west, towards yet another riverbank. He slowed down. He knew the turning was around here somewhere. A huge tractor with a load of sugar beet thundered past him, heading towards Norfolk.
Welcome to White Delphs Wartime Experience and Adventure Playground proclaimed a large notice, which Alan thought had been designed with some care. The khaki and brown camouflage shouldn’t have been eye-catching at all, but it was. Maybe it was the raised, brightly painted lettering plus a zigzag line of cod-machine-gun bullet holes that did it. But whatever it was, it worked – and had been professionally executed. ‘And it wasn’t cheap, either,’ Alan muttered under his breath as he turned into the visitors’ car park.
The car park proclaimed that it was free and welcomed people to come and use it, even if they were not planning to visit the attraction ‘on this occasion’. Smart marketing again, Alan conceded. There was even a picnic area, complete with benches and tables. Another, smaller, painted ‘camouflage’ notice proclaimed that ‘The White Delphs Wartime Experience and Adventure Playground was owned and operated by Historic Projects Management ltd., a registered charity’. The brief terms and conditions were signed off by Blake Lonsdale, Chief Executive, at the HPM Registered Offices in Stratford, east London – of all places. Alan wondered what on earth the connection might be.
Jake was waiting for him and they walked across the car park to a Portakabin behind a screen of tall black poplars, which Alan reckoned had probably been planted during the war. People rarely think of plants being historic monuments, but those trees almost certainly were. Around them were several massive concrete anti-tank cubes, the base of a spigot mortar, another more active anti-tank weapon and pieces of old railway tracks which had been cut into short lengths and set deep into the ground, again against incoming armour. Alan was impressed. It was nice to come across a small corner of the fens that hadn’t been flattened out in the interests of intensive agriculture.
Although it wasn’t the summer tourist season, the car park was by no means empty and Alan’s eye was immediately caught by a gleaming dark-blue Bentley. As they approached the side entrance to the visitor centre, a door a few yards away opened and a man in a smart suit emerged. He pointed the keys at the Bentley, whose lights dutifully blinked. Alan was fascinated: the man’s suit and the Bentley’s paintwork were a perfect match.
Jake touched Alan on the shoulder and semi-whispered, ‘That’s Blake Lonsdale, he’s chief executive of the company that runs this place.’
Their hesitation had caught Lonsdale’s attention. He looked up and strode towards them. ‘So one of you gentlemen must be Jake Williamson?’
‘That’s me.’
They shook hands. Close up Lonsdale was strikingly handsome. Fit, fifties. Film star good looks. Slightly greying temples.
‘And I’m Alan Cadbury. I’m an archaeologist at Fursey Abbey just down the road.’
‘Indeed, I know it well. My friend John Cripps has told me all about your project. Sounds most interesting.’
Blimey, Alan thought, word gets around quickly.
‘I was just going to show Alan what we’ve been up to here,’ Jake added.
‘Excellent. Be our guest. And please be polite about the company, Jake.’ This was said with a broad smile. They then chatted about the perils and pleasures of running a historic visitor attraction, and Alan was impressed not just by his obvious business ability, but by his interest in archaeology. Then a phone rang in the Bentley. ‘I do apologise, that might be quite important. I’d better answer it. So nice to have met you both.’
Jake closed the door of the side entrance behind them.
‘So, will you be “polite about the company”, Jake?’
Jake smiled. ‘To be quite honest, I will. They’ve treated us very well indeed. They’ve given us everything we’ve asked for and never quibbled over contingencies.’
Clients of excavation contractors always quibbled over contingency clauses in project specifications. It was part of life in commercial archaeology. But not, it seemed, at White Delphs.
Once inside the Portakabin, Alan felt immediately at home; this was familiar territory for him. The place had that early morning feel to it: the chill of night-time was still there, but pushed into the background by the steam of kettles and the ubiquitous portable gas stove. This Portakabin also smelled good because Jake’s finds assistant, Henrietta ‘Hen’ Clancy, couldn’t stand instant coffee and had brought a filter coffee maker with her.
She greeted Alan with a warm kiss on both cheeks. She was a little shorter than Jake, but about the same age – late twenties/early thirties – and as Alan looked at them standing together, it was clear that their relationship went beyond the professional. As Alan knew only too well, such things often happened on digs. He thought back to Harriet on the Guthlic’s graveyard job. The memory of her was still fresh, and still, he had to admit, warm. But then he’d blown everything – and pointlessly. It had shaken – in fact it still shook – his confidence. He found his mind returning to those days made dark in high summer, when he knew his obsession was driving the only woman he had really cared for away. But he couldn’t help himself. He’d gone over and over those times, trying to learn lessons from them. And had he? Would he handle things any better now, more than a year on? He hoped he would, but doubted it. His introspection was abruptly broken by Hen who was trying to stack a finds tray on the trestle table behind him.
He stepped aside with a muttered apology. Hen had acquired her nickname because she was a punctilious finds assistant and had a reputation for clucking around people when they handed in their finds trays at the end of a day’s digging. Once Alan had put a rubber egg in her tray. He smiled as he recalled her reaction, which was to return it to Alan, to store in a place ‘where the sun don’t shine’, much to the delight of some tired, mud-spattered diggers.
Jake introduced him to the two professional diggers, Jon and Kaylee, both of whom had graduated the previous summer from the Field School at Westbourne. Alan had a high opinion of Westbourne graduates, who were often motivated and hard-working.
Hen asked about the people behind the Fursey project, as she was becoming increasingly aware that during the current depression some potential employers were a bit financially unreliable, and that the White Delphs company, Heritage Projects Management, had been excellent. Jake added that they also paid promptly, and didn’t quibble over budget changes. By way of response, Alan explained that Fursey was both a long-term visitor attraction and a publicly-funded research project. He told them that so far he’d also found them very good to work for.
Both Hen and Jake already knew Alan and they were glad of the work. The two others were slightly hesitant at first, but once Alan had explained what they were finding and the potential of the Fursey site, they rapidly became more enthusiastic. Soon they agreed to come along, too.
At this, Alan smiled broadly. ‘Thanks for that. It’s good to know I’ll have an experienced team to start the new project. It’s always difficult, when you don’t get much notice. So you’ve helped get me off the hook. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.’
After their short chat, Jake took Alan across to the site. Digging had finished, but it still looked neat and business-like. Alan smiled: for all the world it could have been a Roman villa or a Benedictine monastery for the care and attention they had given the remains. The fact that most of the structures dated to the autumn of 1940 was entirely irrelevant. Everything was there: sunken cable ducts, exposed and displayed as if they had been the flues leading into a Roman bath house hypocaust; rough-cast wartime concrete, brushed and cleaned like the finest Norman masonry.
‘You’ll have to find your own way around, Alan, as I’ve got loads of things to get cleared up before the end of the day.’ Alan nodded; he fully understood. ‘But just to put you in the picture, at the start of the dig I was asked to investigate what they thought might be the accommodation area—’
‘What, for the troops?’ Alan broke in.
‘Yes, but also civilians.’ Jake couldn’t conceal his enthusiasm for the site and the period. ‘Remember, only a few of the specialist gunners were regulars. The rest were Home Guard and some were veterans of the First World War. These chaps would have needed support of some sort.’
‘And did you find it?’
‘Yes, very much so. Over here we’ve got the block-work stub walls for Nissan-hut-type buildings and you can see over here’ – they walked a few paces towards the poplar trees – ‘the remains of tiles and slabs for the floor. We also found spoons, forks and broken glass salt and pepper pots, some with Bakelite tops still in place. We reckon it was the canteen.’
‘So this seems an important site – maybe a regional centre?’
‘Very much so. As you may know, the idea of defensive stop lines was dropped towards the end of 1940.’
‘That was after the collapse of the Maginot Line?’
‘That’s right, and there was a change in the army command back here in Britain. As a result, early in 1941 they went over to a system based on what they called nodal points, which were intended to resist for much longer than the thinly-manned stop lines.’
‘And this is one of them?’
‘Yes, but on a previously existing stop line, the Fenland Command Line, which links into the country’s primary defence, the GHQ Line, over towards Huntingdon. If you climb the Delph bank you can see two spigot mortars, three pillboxes for machine guns and a large shell-proof field gun shelter, which our volunteers have restored to its original wartime condition.’
Alan couldn’t help pulling a face at this. ‘What, gas masks and tea flasks?’
‘I know, Alan,’ Jake continued. ‘I’m not too fond of restorations or re-enactment myself, but I must say, they’ve done a great job, and were advised by an old boy who was actually stationed here, during the war. So it’s 100 hundred per cent genuine. More to the point, they haven’t altered anything structural.’
Alan smiled. He had deserved that.
He said goodbye to Jake and the others, then headed up onto the Delph bank, first pausing to read one of the many information panels, which were concise, well-illustrated and carefully positioned to be unobtrusive, yet avoid the bleaching effect of direct sunlight. Again, Alan detected a professional hand behind it all. No doubt that was why John was so keen on closer co-operation with White Delphs. But how would that go down with other members of the Cripps family? He could clearly imagine how Sebastian would feel.
He was standing on the top of the bank, admiring the view, when his mobile rang. He glanced down at the screen: four missed calls, all from the same unknown Peterborough number, which was phoning him again, now.
‘Alan!’ It was DCI Lane’s voice. ‘At last I’ve managed to get through. Are you digging deep in a lead mine somewhere?’
‘No, Richard, I’m out at White Delphs, as you suggested.’
‘Oh well, then, it’ll be the Delph bank. Seems to cut out signals from Norfolk. You on the top of it now?’
‘How did you guess?’
But Lane had more important things on his mind. ‘Alan, something has been drawn to my attention that I’d like to discuss with you face-to-face – and fairly soon, if that’s possible.’
Alan could detect a note of urgency in Lane’s voice, which was unusual. This had to be important. ‘I’ve nothing on today, but I’m hoping to get to grips with Stan’s notes and stuff tomorrow – but even so, I could do it.’
‘No, let’s make it tonight. Mary’s keen to see you, too. It’s been too long. And we’d like you to see our new place here in Whittlesey.’
Alan well remembered Richard had told him the previous summer that they were planning to move; but that was quick, even for Lane. Alan couldn’t help wondering whether their previous exploits together at Blackfen Prison and Leicester hadn’t made life too hot for the two of them back in the Midlands.
* * *
It was dark when Alan turned the Fourtrak into Straw Bear Close. Alan had smiled when Lane had told him the address: the Straw Bear was the name of the traditional mid-winter Molly Dance – a Fenland variant of Morris Dancing – that Whittlesey was locally famous for. Like other Fenland ceremonies, it was a great excuse to eat and drink too much.
Alan drew into the small gravel pull-in in front of Number 6. Richard Lane answered the bell and ushered Alan into a hallway. Mary emerged from the kitchen and gave Alan a kiss on the cheek.
‘And how’s life in the Fens suiting you both?’ Alan asked her.
She looked across at her husband. ‘We really like it here,’ she replied. ‘I can see my father’s family, who I’d begun to lose contact with.’ Mary had been born and raised in Peterborough. ‘And Richard feels at home with the Fenland force.’ She paused, before adding, ‘So, we’re happy.’
Something about the way she spoke decided Alan against asking whether she – they – were happier here than in Leicester. Some comparisons are best left unmade.
‘Come and have a drink, Alan,’ Lane said. ‘And can I get you another, darling?’
Mary shook her head. ‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’ She looked up at the grandfather clock that stood by the front door, as it had in their last house. ‘Supper will be ready at eight.’ Then she added, looking pointedly at Lane, ‘And don’t get too involved, you two. It’s fish and it’ll turn to rubber if it’s stewed.’
‘No, ma’am,’ Alan replied, taking out his phone and setting the alarm. ‘There, that should do it.’
* * *
Lane and Alan moved into the sitting room, both with glasses of locally-brewed beer. As they walked across to two chairs on either side of a coffee table, Alan couldn’t contain his impatience. ‘Joe Thorey has vanished, hasn’t he?’
‘You seem very certain,’ Lane replied.
Alan explained about the comments in the village pub when the news first broke.
‘So what do you make of that “here we go again”? Was that the banker, Hansworth, or Stan, they were talking about?’
Lane took a long drink from his glass. ‘Oh, it has to be Hansworth. His death had a huge local impact. I was involved when I was with Fenland previously, and helped them sort out a few problems. So I was quite familiar with the case.’
Alan sat forward, listening intently.
‘It all goes back to the 3rd Baronet Cripps, that’s the man everyone calls “Barty”.’
‘Yes,’ Alan broke in. ‘I met him at Stan’s wake. I have to say I liked him. Seemed down-to-earth – and he was the only person who paid any attention to Stan’s parents.’
‘Yes,’ Lane smiled. ‘Well, he was the man who rationalised what was left of the estate in the mid-1980s. A major source of income then, and now, was Fursey Hall, which Barty, with the help of a very good architect, converted into extremely upmarket apartments, which were let to rich Londoners as second homes.’
‘A shrewd move.’
‘On the face of it, yes. But it wasn’t universally welcomed by the family, many of whom used to stay there themselves – for free.’
Alan smiled. ‘Yes, I can imagine that.’
‘Anyhow,’ Lane continued, ‘One of the first of these new tenants was, predictably enough, a rich London banker named James Hansworth.’
As Lane knew, Alan had a visceral loathing of bankers and financiers in general. ‘Yes, reptiles like rivers. He’d have been happy there.’
Lane decided not to rise to this. ‘He actually leased the main, ground-floor apartment – not that it’s an “apartment” in the sense we know it; it’s more like the whole ground floor – in fact it’s the place where Sebastian and Sarah now live. Anyhow, he was no ordinary banker. He didn’t swagger around and was said to have taken the apartment following a sympathetic piece in the Sunday Times about Barty’s efforts to rationalise the estate, which back then was in a pretty poor state. Apparently he genuinely admired people who turned enterprises around – who made successes out of failures.’
‘So was that the area where he made his money?’
‘Yes, he was one of the British hedge fund survivors, following some spectacular collapses overseas in the late ’90s and early 2000s. It would appear he was much more cautious and would only put money in to businesses he had thoroughly researched.’
‘And he approved of what Barty was doing?’
Lane shrugged. ‘So it would appear, although local tongues did wag at the time.’
‘Really?’
Lane smiled. ‘No, Alan, I wouldn’t get excited. The Met were later brought in and they did a detailed forensic check of his firm’s accounts and there’s no evidence whatsoever of any shady deals. It would seem he was absolutely straight – although perhaps that’s not quite the right word—’
‘You mean, he was gay? How did that go down in a rural spot like Fursey?’
‘I think most people followed Barty’s lead.’
‘And he approved?’
‘I don’t know about that. But he was a pragmatist. So why rock the boat? And the local people knew their jobs depended on the estate being turned round; so they went along with his reforms, which included the Fursey Hall apartments. But, of course, one or two loudmouths weren’t very happy. But that’s inevitable.’
‘So when did Hansworth move in?’
‘Nineteen eighty-eight. By all accounts, Barty’s architect had done a superb job on the conversion, which won some prestigious awards. The plaques are still there in the front hall.’
Alan was impressed. Barty rose even further in his estimation.
‘OK, so what happened then?’
‘Ten years passed. Then Sebastian and Sarah decide to get married. As you’ve probably already gathered, Sebastian can be a bit down-to-earth.’
Alan smiled. He secretly rather admired Sebastian’s rural directness. Put him in mind of his own father. ‘Don’t tell me: he asked Hansworth to move out of the main apartment?’
‘Almost. It would seem he did have a “conversation”, but Hansworth, quite reasonably, as he’d been living there ten years, wanted to stay put. And besides, he’d bought a 99-year lease and in those days leases and rental agreements didn’t favour the landlords.’
‘So he didn’t move out?’
‘No, and more to the point, Sebastian accepted the fact and moved into one of the other apartments which had just fallen vacant, and they lived there happily until March 2004.’
‘But presumably they must have resented the fact that they couldn’t move into the main apartment?’
‘Apparently not. As you know, Sebastian has a pragmatic – I’ve heard you call it rural – approach to life and he seemed to have decided to let the matter drop. Sarah, on the other hand, was more proactive; she went out of her way to reestablish good relations with Hansworth.’
‘How on earth did she do that?’ Alan found the idea of a rather conventional, church-going, rural lady forming a friendship with a gay London banker interesting – to say the least.
Lane grinned. ‘As you might know, the gardens at the Hall are quite famous and a few months after the parterre garden won its first award, Sarah told the press that she realised Hansworth was a potential gardener when she saw all the hanging baskets he had arranged in the grand entrance hall.’
‘So that’s how he got involved with the garden.’ Things were starting to fall into place for Alan. ‘Candice mentioned it earlier.’
Lane took a sip from his drink and continued, ‘At the time some people said she had only approached him because of his money; but actually, it does appear he was a natural-born gardener and had always been interested in plants. As time passed, he spent longer and longer at Fursey.’
‘What, days, weeks, months? How did he fit it all in?’
‘In the early ’90s he would only spend weekends there. He had a strict rule about being in the office for Monday morning. But slowly things began to change.’
‘What, the Monday bit?’
‘No, that never altered. Instead he’d return to Fursey earlier in the week – sometimes even on a Wednesday.’
‘Does that mean he was getting bored of banking?’ Alan asked.
‘That’s what I thought, too, but I was wrong. He was 45 when he died and would often say that he’d spent his life delegating and was now reaping the rewards. Again, the Met finance boys made enquiries and it would seem he was right. Apparently his office was very well run – and he was trusted and highly respected in the City.’
‘It sounds like he was in control, not just of his office, but of life in general. So did he spend much time with Sarah in the garden?’
‘Yes, a fair bit, but he also took up fishing. Whether by accident or design, the lease he’d negotiated back in 1988 included exclusive rights to two hundred yards of riverbank – in fact, the same stretch of water where we found Stan’s body.’
‘And what about his gay partners? How did they fit in with the gardening fisherman?’
‘For the last eight or nine years of his life, his only partner was a man called Andrew Fellows. He was an estate agent in Northampton. There’s nothing about him to make us suspicious. But it was Fellows, I think, who got him interested in fishing.’
‘Game fishing, presumably?’
‘No,’ Lane replied. ‘That’s the surprising thing. They both enjoyed coarse fishing, especially for eels, which are still quite plentiful hereabouts. Sarah also told me that Fellows was a good cook and she would sometimes be invited to their apartment to share an eel with them.’
There was a pause while both men thought through what had been said. Alan was the first to speak. ‘Right, so that takes us, I think, to 2004.’ Lane nodded. Alan drained the last of his beer before speaking again. ‘Although I think I can guess from what you’ve already said, but I’ve got to ask: what happened next?’
Lane was about to reply when the phone in Alan’s shirt pocket sounded the alarm. Time for supper – and they both knew it would be a fatal error to continue their conversation away from the table.
* * *
Mary was standing at the stove putting the finishing touches to the parsley sauce, while Lane and Alan were piling their plates high. She took off her apron and put the steaming sauce boat on the table.
‘There,’ she said. ‘Help yourselves, boys.’
Eating in the Lane household had always been more about enjoying the food hot, than the usual, rather prim, English social niceties. The sauce jug came to ground near Alan, so he immediately helped himself, then handed it on to Lane.
‘It’s great to be back with you both,’ Alan said. ‘And I do like the house. You must have a good view from the upstairs rooms at the back.’
‘Yes, we do,’ Mary replied, helping herself to a buttery spoonful of Savoy cabbage. ‘You can see right along the King’s Dyke and over across to the old knot holes which are teeming with wildlife: buzzards, hares – even the occasional deer.’
The ‘knot holes’ were what local people called the pits dug deep into the Oxford clay by the London Brick Company before the war. These vast holes were the raw material of Victorian and Edwardian London. But half a century of abandonment had changed them dramatically – for the better.
‘Anyhow, Alan, Richard has been telling me all about what has been going on at Fursey. You do lead an exciting life, don’t you?’
‘Well, I hope this time it all blows over. I think I’d rather be an archaeologist than a bad amateur sleuth. And believe me, Mary, the site is extraordinary. It’s already producing loads of Roman military stuff. All completely unexpected.’
‘So you don’t reckon anything strange is going on there. You’ll simply be able to do your dig without any distractions?’
Alan hadn’t meant to imply that. And she knew it.
‘Obviously Stan’s death will need to be sorted out, but that’s more Richard’s affair than mine—’
‘And Hansworth?’ she broke in. ‘Is that linked in any way?’
‘I honestly don’t know.’ Alan was feeling very wrong-footed and he couldn’t decide if Lane was enjoying his predicament. ‘But, obviously,’ he continued without much conviction, ‘I’m keeping my eyes open for any possible clues.’
Mary pressed home the point. ‘What about that curse business. You think it might be relevant?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about that,’ Lane said. ‘I think a lot of the Curse of the Cripps stuff is rubbish; mostly gossip by jealous locals.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right,’ Alan replied, keen now to clarify what he actually thought. ‘But I think two, and now possibly three, unexplained deaths in the stretch of river that passes through the estate do need to be explained – if only to silence the rumour-mongers.’
‘Of course, we were very sad indeed about your poor friend Stan,’ Mary said. ‘And we were around when Hansworth vanished. But that was rather strange. I remember thinking at the time there was something not quite right about it.’
‘How do you mean?’ Alan asked.
‘I don’t know. It all seemed “managed” in a sort of PR fashion: information came out in dribs and drabs. Put me in mind of the way the Blair government “managed” the official enquiry into the lead-up to the Iraq War. It was all about “spin” and cover-up – not truth. Don’t you agree, Richard?’
Lane was smiling slightly anxiously. It was unusual for Mary to be quite so frank.
‘I will admit that everyone’s story held together and was consistent. But then that’s what you’d expect in a well-run family team. I imagine people probably did consult together and yes, I think there was an element of damage limitation there, too. But again, given all that curse business, and the fact that the family were involved with a popular visitor attraction – which is what the farm shop and restaurant were, let alone the then new Abbey project – I don’t think that’s particularly surprising.’
Some of this was passing Alan by. He needed more precise information. He had stopped theorising and was now actively looking for clues.
‘I’m sorry, Richard, but you’ll have to tell me precisely what happened. All I have gathered is that a banker named Hansworth, who was a keen fisherman, died in the river, near to where Stan’s body washed up, sometime in 2004.’
‘It was mid-March, actually,’ Lane said. ‘We don’t know for sure, but it seems most likely that the accident—’
‘If that’s what it was,’ Mary interrupted.
‘Yes, dear, if that’s what it was. And remember the coroner’s court passed a verdict of death by misadventure—’
‘Like Stan.’ It was Alan’s turn to disrupt his friend’s narrative.
‘Indeed, like Stan – and just like Stan, I can’t start rumours about murder. So I’ve got to be very, very careful. It’s worth remembering that the Cripps family are very powerful. So we’ve got to be extra discreet. If they get so much as a whiff that you’re looking into the case, Alan, you can kiss goodbye to your job and your precious archaeology.’
Alan nodded. He was only too well aware of that.
Lane took a deep breath and resumed. ‘As I was saying, we reckon that the accident probably happened on the weekend of the thirteenth and fourteenth of March, the last two days of the coarse-fishing season. Normally, the riverbanks would have been crowded on the Monday, and maybe his body would have been spotted. But the place was deserted.’
‘But you told me before supper that he usually went fishing with his partner?’ Alan had to ask.
‘He did,’ Lane replied. ‘But on that particular weekend, Fellows couldn’t join him. So he was fishing alone. Then next morning, Joe Thorey had some business to attend to in Ely – something to do with the estate shotgun licences – so didn’t get back to Fursey until after dinner. He found Hansworth’s stool, rod and keepnet, which he took back to the apartment. Apparently he quite often left tackle on the bank if it needed to be repaired – which was something Thorey did for him—’
‘Privately, “on the side”?’ Alan broke in.
‘Yes, from time to time. It was simpler than taking stuff over to Keeper’s Cottage. And I gather Thorey did quite a lot of work of that sort. It seems he quite enjoyed it.’
‘And did any of the kit need repairing?’
‘Yes, all of it. Thorey described it as “end of season maintenance”. So he cleaned it all up.’
‘And in the process’ – Alan was thinking aloud – ‘he removed most of the evidence. Unfortunate, that?’ The question was asked with a hint of irony.
‘Yes,’ Lane replied, also deep in thought. ‘You’re right, it was; but I think it’s an understandable mistake for a keeper to have made. There had been very heavy rain over the previous week and the river was still rising. It might all have got washed away.’
‘Hardly ideal fishing conditions, then?’ Alan still wasn’t altogether convinced.
‘Yes, that’s what we thought too, but apparently the stretch of water downstream of the mill is much calmer than the main river. In effect, it’s a backwater and, according to Thorey, fish tend to gather there when the river’s in spate.’
‘OK,’ Alan conceded. ‘So did they find his fingerprints on the rod?’
‘Yes, they did, along with Thorey’s, of course. Anyhow, Hansworth’s absence was noted the following morning when he failed to arrive back at work. His absence caused consternation, as the end of the financial year was approaching. And he didn’t turn up at his smart flat in the Barbican, either. The next day the press got to hear about it and there were big headlines on all the financial pages – “Prominent banker disappears”, that sort of thing. All were speculating that he’d “done a runner”.’
‘But then he never reappeared,’ Alan added.
‘Quite,’ Lane replied. ‘So the “done a runner” story died. Eventually his body turned up close to Denver Sluice, but that was in May and by then all useful forensic evidence had long rotted away. In fact, he was almost unrecognisable and was eventually identified by DNA.’
‘Any broken bones?’ Alan asked. He was thinking of Stan.
‘No, none, but then there aren’t any more mills downstream of Fursey.’
Alan had one last important question to ask. ‘You mentioned that Joe Thorey found Hansworth’s rod. As a matter of interest, what happened to him after that?’
‘At the time he found the rod, he’d been employed, if that’s the right term on a part-time basis; he used to help out when needed on shoots and during the fishing season, but Sarah Cripps had ambitious plans for the shoot, which soon became very much larger and better organised. I gather they charge over a thousand pounds a day for a gun. Joe Thorey got a full-time job as a keeper on the estate at the end of March. Eventually, the following summer, he was appointed head keeper on Bert Hickson’s early retirement. Hickson moved out of Keeper’s Cottage and Thorey moved in. That’s the way things work on such estates.’
‘And of course, it was Hickson,’ Mary added quietly, ‘who found your friend Stan.’
Yes, Alan thought, wheels within waterlogged wheels. Two ‘accidents’, both involving water and on land owned and controlled by the Cripps family.
In Stan’s case, Alan could see at least two clear links already: to the Smileys and to Sebastian, both of whom had known about the storm damage to the mill before it appeared on the television news. And in the Hansworth case it was difficult to ignore Thorey’s role, although Alan was also aware that his judgement might be clouded by his dislike of the man. And as for motives that linked the two deaths? That was much harder. The obvious one for Stan would be some archaeological discovery which adversely affected the Fursey Estate. But that couldn’t possibly apply to Hansworth. But what about Candice and Sarah? At first glance they didn’t appear very close, but life had taught Alan that women were far better at dissimulation than men. And they both had a strong interest in seeing that the Cripps family fortunes increased: Sarah, through the shoot and ‘field sports’; and Candice through the abbey dig. Then his mind flicked forward: and of course poor old Stan didn’t like doing television. Candice had told him that it didn’t matter, but Alan had detected more than a hint of regret in her voice when she’d said it. Maybe she realised that Fursey would always be a second-division attraction without national publicity. So did she see Stan’s refusal to do TV as damaging her career – her life? More to the point, she was now absolutely delighted that he, Alan, was leading the Test Pit Challenge project. So from both Candice and Sarah’s point of view, things had worked out well. Very well indeed.
* * *
Alan didn’t spend a very restful night; his mind was constantly working. There was nothing for it but to take charge. Look for the evidence, rather than speculate. He put on his black North Face jacket and rucksack, pulled up the hood, then clicked his phone on to silent: 4.03am. He stood still, took a few deep breaths, then turned out the house lights, opened the back door and slipped noiselessly out. He climbed out of his untended back garden and headed away from the few village streetlights, then he crossed to the unlit side of Fore Street, and a gap in the brick wall surrounding the park. Everyone in the village knew that this led to a shortcut that younger people used if they needed somewhere away from prying eyes – which was exactly what Alan was after now.
The trees in Fursey Park were quite famous and included several massive old oaks, some of which had been pollarded in the Middle Ages. There were also the remains of an early medieval deer boundary ditch, which may well have been in active use when the monks took the site over in Norman times. Alan hurried from tree to tree as by now the wind had got up and occasionally moonlight lit the scene. He caught sight of roe deer and a tawny owl returning to its nest with a small rat clasped in its talons. The tree cover became thinner as he approached Abbey Farm and he waited for a large patch of cloud before he attempted to cross the open ground behind the 1950s pig sheds. Alan clearly remembered seeing Stan in what he called his ‘cupboard’, when he came for his second visit in early November, just over a year ago. But now things had changed and were about to change even more, Alan reckoned, as he looked at the teleporter parked on the edge of the yard, just outside the abandoned buildings. They belonged to a firm of demolition contractors. He knew it was now or never.
He climbed through an open window and found himself in what had been the main Fursey Abbey offices, until the end of last year. Alan had helped them transfer stuff into the current, but temporary, Portakabin office, three weeks previously. He glanced at a tattered Year Planner for 2009, which was still pinned to the wall. On the wall, too, were scraps of Christmas decorations, presumably the last office party in the old building, which somebody had attempted rather half-heartedly to remove.
The floor inside the broken window was damp and slippery, but once he’d got further into the building he even detected a hint of warmth, presumably left over from daytime sunshine on the single-storey flat roof. Everywhere there was the sad, musty smell of abandonment. Nobody cared about these buildings anymore and soon they would vanish forever.
Alan tried to picture that day when he visited Stan. They’d come in through the main door and someone, probably Candice he now realised, had spotted him through the half-open office door. He must have looked like an archaeologist, because she’d called out, ‘If you want Stan, he’s further down the corridor, third door on the right, just before the freezer room.’
When he’d first walked along the corridor he’d been passed several times by kitchen assistants in pale-blue overalls and white aprons heading towards the double kitchen doors at the end. Just out of interest he pushed them open and had a look: the place had been stripped clean of everything, except the worn linoleum floor. All that remained were several drain holes in the floor and walls and the larger openings for extractor fans in the ceiling. There was a strong smell of stale cooking oil.
Next he pushed at the door into Stan’s ‘cupboard’, half expecting, for some reason, to find it locked. But it opened. He shut it quietly behind him. As he did so he pulled a small torch from his pocket and looked around. The desk had been moved to the centre of the room, as if they had planned to take it away, but had had second thoughts. And who could blame them? It was very tatty, with woodworm holes across the whole of the back. Alan flashed his torch at the wall where he remembered it had originally stood and, yes, woodworm was there, too.
He pulled open the large drawer at the centre of the desk. It was empty. The drawers on either side of the knee-space were empty too and the top one had been removed and was still lying on the floor. Then he walked across to the two-drawer filing cabinet close to the wall opposite the door. Stan’s old and slightly warped drawing board was propped up against it. Alan pulled open the top drawer and looked in: a few disposable draftsman’s pens and some elderly scale-rules, but nothing else. Alan looked carefully through the hanging-files in the lower drawer, but they were all empty. Then he stood back. He was certain there must be something else here too. But where?
Suddenly the early morning silence was shattered by a loud creaking rasp. All the hairs on the back of Alan’s neck stood up. It was a strange, unearthly, sound. He looked around for a weapon of some sort, but the tiny room was absolutely bare. He opened the door and slipped into the corridor. Then the sound came again, quieter this time, and clearly from the old office. Alan took out his clasp knife. Hardly an offensive weapon, but much better than nothing. Then rapidly he threw open the office door and pulled it back. When he gingerly looked again, the place was empty. But he could feel a very slight breeze. Then the ungreased iron-framed window creaked. Bloody thing! Feeling a bit of a fool, Alan shut it.
As he returned to Stan’s ‘cupboard’ Alan thought about the building’s original use as a piggery. They’d had a smaller one on the farm at home, until his father had got fed up with the long hours and unstable prices for pork. At one end of each unit there used to be a small compartment where his father would keep food supplements, veterinary supplies and a card index of the current batch of sows and their litters. This is what Stan’s little office had once been.
Half of the wall away from the door was angled at 45 degrees, which was where the ‘clean cupboard’ had been when the building was still part of the farm. Now the floor space in front of it was occupied by the filing cabinet. If it was anything like the piggeries back home, Alan thought, this angled wall still covered the place where they’d kept things that they didn’t want to get dirty: wormer guns, spray cans etc. Alan tapped the wall with the butt of his torch. It was hollow, but had been neatly covered-over with a sheet of plasterboard, presumably during the original conversion in the late ’70s. He moved the filing cabinet. And it paid off. Just above the floor was a small and very home-made sliding hatch of white cardboard.
Alan raised the little hatch and shone his torch inside. Propped against a quarter-full bottle of whisky in front of dozens of empties was a battered brown notebook. The cover bore the felt-tip legend, in Stan’s handwriting: ‘Fursey BH log: Nov 11–28, 2008.’ Why wasn’t it in the desk? Why would Stan have kept a secret log, Alan wondered? Presumably he was keeping it secret from someone in the Cripps family, as there were no archaeologists with him at the time. John? Candice? Surely not Sebastian? He shook his head.
Outside it was that ‘darkest hour just before dawn’. He knew he didn’t have long, but he couldn’t resist taking a closer look at the notebook’s pages. They were full of little columnar stratigraphic sketches, complete with notes and levels above or below sea level, known in the trade as Ordnance Datum (OD). Typical of Stan, Alan thought, each sketch is dated and even timed: ‘Completed 20.15’. He glanced at another: ‘20.25’; and another ‘21.00’. Alan had several notebooks of his own like this one, and he recognised it for what it was instantly: a set of auger, or borehole logs. He also knew they’d make no sense unless he could work out the levels and draw up a collated transverse section at 1:20, or smaller if needs be. And that would take time. He slipped the notebook inside his jacket and zipped the pocket.
Next he pulled out the lone bottle with whisky still in it. A small glass had been up-ended over the stopper. Alan sniffed it. He could just detect the faintest aroma of one of his friend’s last drinks. Scents and smells had a powerfully evocative effect on Alan. Briefly Stan stood beside him. No need for words. The bottles said it all. How very sad and what a bloody awful waste of talent. Then the moment passed. He almost shouted at the injustice of life in his rage and frustration. Finally, a tired calm took over: what was the point?
He was about to put the bottle back in the wall recess, but then he paused. He was shining his torch on the small label on the back of the bottle. A 20-year-old Glen Hubris McTavish – probably the finest Speyside malt money could buy. He looked more closely and there, in tiny print at the very bottom of the back label, was the line: Distillers by Appointment to Fisher College, Cambridge. For a moment he hesitated, then he slipped the bottle in his rucksack.
He remembered what Stan had said about Peter Flower: ‘Such a kind and helpful man’. Oh yeah? Somehow Alan choked back his anger, but the discovery of the bottle was important to his search for the truth. What would Flower have gained – what was his motive? Then it came to him. It was so bloody obvious. What would an academic gain from a shy, reticent but technically competent co-author who had started to drink? Control was the answer. Complete control of everything that mattered – everything that allowed him to enlarge his own reputation at the expense of Stan’s. And to add to the irony, in the eyes of the world, it would be he, Peter Flower, who was trying to help Stan fight off his addiction. From now on, Alan knew his investigation would be more focused, and personal. Horribly personal.