Distant, echoing voices were calling his name. Fish were slapping against the side of his face and the ground shook, rolling him over onto his side. His head throbbed and he became aware of pain somewhere inside his skull. Everything was hot, then cold. His eyes wouldn’t open and his brain was about to explode. Then the fish returned, but harder, more insistent than before. Slowly the fish became wet hands. Then his eyes opened, but wouldn’t focus. He could see grass and reed stalks and beyond that, the edge of the dyke. Then his lids came down. Blackness. Gently two sets of hands rolled him onto his back. Another person supported his head. He lay there, still and helpless, while the pain inside his head slowly intensified. Then the light returned. He was looking up into Harriet’s face. Her eyeliner had run down her cheeks and she was crying. Her silvery top was torn and smeared with mud.
‘Drink this, Alan.’ She held a bottle to his lips and he took a few sips. ‘You must drink.’
He lay back. The pain was still there, but not growing. He motioned for more water and drank again. Her hands were gently massaging the back of his neck. That felt good. Very good.
The next voice was familiar, too. ‘Glad to have you back, Alan.’ It was Richard Lane. ‘You had us worried for a moment.’
‘What happened? I fell over?’
‘No, you were hit. From behind. By Sebastian Cripps.’
Alan groaned. He’d been duped. ‘Have you got him?’
‘Yes, he put up a struggle. But we’ve got him – entirely thanks to your friend, Harriet, here.’
‘Yes, Alan, I put some rocks in my handbag and whacked him over the head.’
Alan’s befuddled brain had a vision of a drowning Thorey. Harriet grasped his face gently in both her hands, and moved closer to him.
‘No, Alan, I didn’t. I was being silly. All I did was film him on my phone. But we captured everything. Every last detail.’
Alan looked up at her. She was smiling through the tears. Slowly, her eyes came nearer to him. He could feel the warmth of her breath as she leant forward, closer, closer. Lightly, she kissed him. Then quietly the lights went out; only this time it was sleep, not oblivion.
* * *
Alan woke up in his own bed. He was wearing pyjamas. The duvet cover had been changed and the pillows smelled clean and fresh. A temporary curtain had been rigged over the window. There was a jar of daffodils on the wardrobe. He could hear feet on the narrow stairs leading up to the attic bedroom. The door opened. It was Harriet. She was carrying a tray with a teapot, mug and little jug of milk. She put the tray on the bedside table and filled the mug.
‘I’m taking you to the outpatients in Ely,’ she said, as she put down the tray. ‘You’re to see the cranial impact specialist at ten. Richard Lane insisted that I make the appointment.’
He glanced at his watch. It was 8.30.
‘So tell me, Harry, what happened after I left the shelter? Presumably you followed me down?’
‘Yes, I did, but not before I’d phoned Richard Lane – and you saw me doing that, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but I’d no idea who you were talking to. But what made you suspicious?’
‘It was partly the timing, which seemed so contrived. And Sebastian must have known that everyone would be busy de-rigging the set, or getting ready for the wrap party. And besides, I’d never really liked Sebastian. He has a huge chip on his shoulder. Feels he ought to have been a big aristo. He has the house, but lacks the estate to support it. In many ways I felt quite sorry for his wife, Sarah. At least she was trying to do something to raise money.’
‘The shoot and the fishing, you mean?’
‘Yes, that and the social side that went with it. I think she very much admired what Candice and John were doing here: the farm shop, the restaurant and more recently the archaeological venture. It all made sense, and she approved of John’s plans to go in with the White Delphs people – although she didn’t dare to support him at board meetings. Sebastian would never have allowed that.’
‘So do you think he was behind Thorey’s death? I’d always thought it was the old head keeper, Bert Hickson. He had no reason to like Thorey, either.’
‘I don’t know. Anyhow, I’ve never trusted Sebastian further than I could spit.’ Despite the seriousness of the moment Alan smiled at the unlikely image of a gobbing Harriet. ‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘Lane tells me there’s going to be a thorough investigation, so that’s something, at least.’
Alan had his doubts: Hickson was a very wily old boy. But then something brought him up short: why had she, Harriet, spotted the real villain, and not him? After all, he was meant to be the dig director, the man who could follow up clues. He believed passionately in deduction: move from the specific to the general. Look for clues. Build up a case, point-by-point. And for the past four months he had been doing just that. Almost obsessively.
Then he remembered the set-piece he’d organised a month ago. He’d observed everyone in the room closely. Yet nobody betrayed anything. He might just as well not have bothered. And now it had come to this: he had been bashed over the head by a man he should have suspected from the outset. It was Harriet who’d had the confidence to ring up Richard Lane and call in reinforcements – and at the critical moment. So was all that based on her ‘female intuition’: her suspicion and dislike of Sebastian’s character? He lay back, his mind reeling. Somehow, he thought, I need to redeem myself. I’ve got to find out what it was that drove Sebastian to act the way he did. And was it just Sebastian on his own? What about Hickson? What about Flower? What, come to that, about Candice?
Suddenly he realised that Harriet had resumed speaking.
‘So I knew where you were heading and I told Lane about it. He was great and swung into action immediately. He said he’d be there in fifteen minutes, and with support. They parked in the road and took the path along the wall to the lychgate.’ She took a sip from Alan’s tea. ‘I was following about a dozen paces behind you when Sebastian ambushed you.’
This was too much.
‘By then Richard Lane had arrived with a couple of constables dressed for the part. They each stood astride, like in the films, and pointed their Tasers at him, two-handed. Then Lane shouted at him to stop what he was doing.’ She frowned as she remembered the scene. ‘But he had some cool. He looked up, all smiles of relief. All innocence. He said he’d managed to stop you from committing suicide. But I caught it all on my phone. Turns out that Frank’s “reality show filming technique” has its uses after all.’
‘Caught what, exactly?’
‘Plenty of time for that, later.’ She took another sip from Alan’s mug. ‘Richard asked me to hand the phone over as important evidence. I gave it to one of the PCs, who sealed it in a bag, which I signed with the time and date.’
Alan was looking at her with admiration and amazement. Putting the tea down, she became the efficient nurse once again.
‘Come on, Alan, up you get. There’s just time for a quick slice of toast. Then we must get going. Can’t keep the specialist waiting.’
She gathered up the tray and headed downstairs.
Alan rolled over and picked up his phone. He had to speak to Richard Lane. Urgently.
‘Richard. You must search the outbuildings at Fursey Hall. The thing is, they rarely made those traps as one-offs. They were normally set in groups as part of a bigger plan to beat poachers. So there’s got to be another one somewhere. I’m sure it’ll have clues to Thorey. And to Sebastian.’
He had tried to keep his voice down, but failed. He could hear Harriet’s feet on the stairs. The bedroom door opened. She strode briskly across to the bed, picked up his phone and pocketed it.
‘I’m having that, if you don’t mind, Alan. You’re meant to be recovering. Phone calls can wait till we get the all-clear from the doctor.’
* * *
The visit to the outpatients lasted a couple of hours and ended with an MRI scan. The specialist looked at the results for some time, then concluded that he could see no immediate problems, although Alan was to contact them at once if there was a return of the headaches. Harriet, who was driving them home, wasn’t a great one for talking when at the wheel.
He still couldn’t accept that he had missed so many clues. It had almost become a matter of self-esteem – it worried him so much and was now something of an obsession with him. It was like that time two years ago, when he couldn’t spot the clue in the lists of samples from Flax Hole in the museum basement in Leicester. That too had become an obsession. Then, purely by chance, he realised that he was looking in entirely the wrong place. Instead, he needed to think outside the box, to use a cliché he detested. In other words, he had to look beyond the intricacies of the moment, to what might have appealed to, or motivated, a criminal. And as it turned out, that had nothing whatsoever to do with what was preoccupying him at the time.
He began to rethink the reactions to his set-piece at the end of that first meeting about the Fursey Penance in the ochre-painted dining room of Abbey Farmhouse. He had been expecting people to show their emotions, but the more he thought about it, the more naive that now seemed. Then he recalled how the day before, at the run-through, Harriet had seen him staring at her, and how he had got up and taken his Nikon mug to the flask of coffee at the other end of the trench.
He well remembered pressing down on the flask’s lever, and the sound of the now-tepid liquid filling his mug. Meanwhile he didn’t have to act a role. The muscles of his face had relaxed naturally; they knew what to do. He didn’t have to act when he concentrated on pouring coffee. That way he covered his confusion. A simple trick, but effective.
He ran the events of his ‘set-piece’ through his mind again, more slowly. He had a clear picture of precisely what had happened – he had been concentrating with such intensity. For the hundredth time he was back in the red-walled dining room and he had just announced that the building stone used at Fursey had been hewn from the medieval quarries at Barnack, near Stamford. That meant the stone had effectively acquired a unique identity. The modern equivalent might be fine Italian marble; buildings made from it were extremely important, especially so far away from the quarries. John and Candice were amazed at the news; the Fen dean was predictably delighted; Sebastian yawned and went to pour himself a cup coffee; and the new Fursey manager, Steve Grant, never looked up, he was too intent on his mobile phone. Nobody at the table looked even slightly guilty.
The first two reactions were natural and genuine – he was sure of that. But then it came to Sebastian and Steve Grant. Steve was a new appointment, so could immediately be discounted. But what about Sebastian? Then another thought struck him. The dean’s ‘misguided’ trousers. That song and his own rapid exit for the toilet. It was all about covering up, concealing and diverting attention. At long last, he’d got it. The action of rising to get coffee signalled that Sebastian knew about Barnack and everything in Stan’s hidden notebook on the day he was murdered.
And now Alan had no doubt: it was murder.
Then Alan thought about Joe Thorey’s death: his pockets had been stuffed with pieces of brick. And only brick. Sebastian must have known that he couldn’t have used stone from the abbey, if he didn’t want the body traced to the Fursey Estate – which would immediately have implicated him. Then Alan had a second thought: the complete absence of any limestone and the careful selection of mass-produced bricks revealed paranoia and guilt. There was no way Thorey’s death could possibly have been suicide. Whatever else he may have been, Thorey was not a thinking man. He’d have simply stuffed his pockets with whatever came to hand and probably wouldn’t have even bothered to button them up.
* * *
On their way back home, Harriet had diverted to a giant Waitrose store on the outskirts of Ely. She led Alan round to the coffee shop, where she bought him a large latte and a curly Danish pastry. Then she selected a copy of the Independent from the rack and led him to a comfy chair.
‘Stay there, Alan, and don’t move till I come back. Understand?’
He nodded. It was like being 12 all over again: warm, loved and safe.
She took a deep breath and pulled out a long list. Then she headed towards the shelves.
An hour and a half later they arrived back home. Harriet took Alan through to the sitting room, and turned on the heater. Then she poured him a beer and went to make lunch. While she was in the kitchen, there was a knock on the front door. She answered it. A constable had returned her phone, ‘with Detective Chief Inspector Lane’s compliments’. Smiling, she handed Alan’s phone back to him.
After lunch Alan asked if he could view the footage on her phone. He’d not been able to think of anything else since the constable had returned it. He needed to know exactly what had happened, and yet part of him was also terrified. She sat on the arm of his chair and looked over his shoulder.
At first the image was very shaky, but then it steadied as the camera closed in on Sebastian who was carrying a pick-handle and staring intently ahead.
Alan shook his head. ‘I’m amazed he didn’t spot you. How close were you?’
‘I don’t know, I wasn’t measuring, but I was standing on the edge of those shrubs behind him and he was completely focused on you. I don’t think for one moment he thought anyone else would be there. So he wasn’t looking.’
But they were. Slowly Sebastian raised the pick handle. Harriet grabbed Alan’s shoulder and buried her head in his sleeve.
‘This next bit’s horrible.’ Her voice was muffled by his clothes.
And it was. With all his strength Sebastian brought the pick handle down on Alan’s head, but at the last minute he must have heard something, or just decided to move, because instead of catching him square-on, it was a glancing blow to the side the head and his right shoulder, which was still very sore. Alan rubbed his right shoulder. It was still very sore.
Now the camera moved very slowly towards Sebastian’s rear. Harriet had raised her head and whispered in Alan’s ear, ‘I didn’t want him to spot me, and I thought I’d heard some branches breaking in the distance. I hoped and prayed it was the police.’
And what if it hadn’t been, Alan thought, what then? He was so impressed by her bravery and composure. He put his left arm around her shoulder and she snuggled in closer.
‘I thought he was going to finish you off there and then,’ she continued. ‘But he had other plans. While he’d been waiting for you he’d gathered up a pile of stones, presumably originally from the wall.’
Alan nodded: there was a lot of loose stonework at the foot of the monastic boundary.
Then the image cut.
Alan paused the film, while she explained. ‘I turned the phone off briefly, as I knew I was running out of time. I could also hear Richard Lane and his men approaching, although Sebastian was so intent on what he was doing that he heard nothing. Then I turned it on again.’
Alan did the same.
‘I was less worried about being seen, as I was now sure help was at hand. So I dared to get a bit closer.’
And she did. Alan was astonished by the clarity and steadiness of the image. That took some self-control.
On screen, they could clearly see Sebastian taking rocks from the small pile and cramming them into Alan’s rucksack. Alan shook his head as he watched Sebastian. He was really jamming them in. He meant business all right. That rucksack must have weighed a ton. Then suddenly, Sebastian looked up: his face was horrified. His mouth sagged open. Rapidly he looked around him, then dropped his head. He was surrounded.
Briefly the image shook, then the screen went blank.