The Lifers' Club

by Francis Pryor

  ‘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 aro
und 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?

  Thirty-one

  The sunshine of the afternoon had given way to an overcast evening and the light was beginning to fail, as Alan walked across to where it had happened. He had insisted that Harriet stayed at home. This was his fault. His problem. She didn’t need to see the full extent of the horror.

  He was relieved to see that Steve’s body had already been taken away. Its place was taken by a rather crudely executed outline in yellow marker paint – altogether inferior, Alan thought, to the neat white shapes on TV cop shows. Steve’s shovel lay where he had dropped it when the disaster struck. Its blade was still pointing upwards – something no experienced archaeologist would ever allow. A shovel blade can cut deeply and anyone accidentally stepping on it gets the full force of the handle in the crotch. Sounds comic, but isn’t. Alan realised that whatever had happened, must have been very sudden.

  He stood and looked around him. The shattered brickwork of the cistern – the bricks themselves, their bond and the mortar that bound them together – was identical to the farm buildings immediately alongside it, and he could see where rusted downpipes from the roof gutters kept it topped-up with water. The sheds had probably been used in Victorian times to over-winter sheep and cattle, both of which drink huge quantities of water when lactating – hence the size of the underground cistern. Alan paced out the distance between the marks left by the two rear stabiliser feet, which showed exactly where the JCB had last been working, and the furthest extent of the cistern. It was about three and a half metres – which was also the distance to the shovel. If I’d been banksman on that job, he thought, that’s exactly where I’d have been, too. So Steve hadn’t been standing too close. In a way that came as a relief.

  ‘Something told me you wouldn’t follow bloody orders.’

  Alan looked up. It was Lane.

  ‘He was my friend. How could I stay away?’

  Lane nodded. Alan guessed he would have responded exactly the same.

  ‘We removed the JCB and the body two hours ago.’

  Alan was deep in thought, staring down into the huge water-filled hole.

  ‘Why remove the digger?’

  ‘Health and Safety insisted. They said its weight might collapse the brickwork.’

  Alan was sceptical. He took a couple of steps sideways and crouched down to look into the cistern. Reluctantly he had to agree: they’d been right; the brickwork was deeply cracked. Recently, too, to judge by the mortar. Something had given it an almighty whack. He stood up.

  ‘Has anyone seen that crack?’

  ‘Yes, the H and S man said it was due to the machine’s vibration. Old brickwork gets brittle through time, especially the mortar. That’s what did it. He was in no doubt.’

  Lane could see Alan was upset. He placed a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Poor Alan, this must be horribly grim for you?’

  ‘It is. We were good mates. And I’m glad the body has gone. I was dreading seeing that. I’ve never seen a friend dead.’

  They stood looking down into the cistern. After a few moments Alan asked the obvious question:

  ‘Do you think it was an accident?’

  ‘You tell me.’ Lane’s reply was non-committal. ‘On the face of it: yes, it was. A fairly standard accident. Just the sort of thing that happens around old buildings…’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But it happened at Priory Farm.’

  Alan knew he should say nothing about Paul’s original plan to have him do the banksman’s job. Right now, the last thing he wanted was for Lane to force him to go into hiding, which he almost certainly would. Alan had to be completely free to do what would shortly need doing. But he also needed to learn more about the way Steve had died. Or been killed.

  ‘Was he in a bad mess?’

  ‘Yes, he was,’ Lane replied. ‘Bruises and severe abrasions around the head and shoulders.’

  ‘Is that what you’d expect from such an accident? I’d have thought he would just have fallen in and drowned. End of story.’

  ‘I agree, but our accident team say that rarely happens. Many deaths are actually caused by rescue efforts…’

  ‘Is that what you think happened here?’ Alan asked.

  ‘Yes, but the digger driver’s gone. He was genuinely very shaken. The paramedics sent him off to hospital.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Pilgrim, Boston. Why, are you thinking of talking to him?’

  ‘It had crossed my mind.’ Alan said.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t bother. He barely spoke any English. You’d be wasting your time. But he’s been seen by an officer who can speak Turkish. It would seem the driver raised the digger arm to reach out to Mr Allen and by doing so released a mass of unstable brickwork which came crashing down on his head…’

  Driver didn’t speak much English. Must have been Kadir, Alan thought. And yes, Lane’s account sort of rang true. He would have tried to use the digger arm to rescue Steve. A more able-bodied man might have jumped into the cistern, but not poor Kadir – his legs were so short and misshapen.

  ‘And that was that?’

  ‘Yes, sadly. It was.’

  DI Lane said this softly. He laid a supporting arm on Alan’s shoulder and steered him towards his car. Once safely inside, he poured out a mug of coffee, reached into the glovebox and produced a hip flask. He gave Alan the generously laced steaming mug.

  Alan drank deeply for a few moments, clasping the mug in both hands. The warmth flowed through his body. He breathed in deeply.

  ‘Thanks, Richard.’ He took a few more sips. ‘You know, I sort of expected to see you down here…’

  ‘Sort of?’ Lane replied in mock astonishment. ‘You know we’ve got
this place under observation. Our bloke was on the scene five minutes before the ambulance.’

  ‘Did he see anything?’

  ‘Sadly, he didn’t. He called us when the driver ran over from here, shouting stuff in Turkish, and waving his arms in the air. Our informer raised the alarm. He works as a temporary packer in the hangar.’

  ‘For Reference Collections?’

  Alan was amazed. Lane had placed an undercover officer right in the heart of PFC and Alan hadn’t noticed a thing. But then why would he? There was a stream of temporary staff who came and went through the place when the pressure was on. And if he hadn’t noticed he was pretty damn sure Paul wouldn’t have done either. For the first time in a long while, he felt reassured.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘You know I can’t tell you that.’

  Alan nodded. Of course. The last thing Lane needed was for Alan to accidentally let that slip.

  ‘Anyway, he informs me that they’ve a big job on.’

  ‘I know, for somewhere in the Middle East.’

  ‘Oh yes. Your man Paul told us all about it.’

  ‘When he got here from London?’

  ‘Yes. Didn’t stay long. Maybe fifteen minutes. Had an appointment somewhere else.’

  ‘Bloody typical.’

  ‘He seemed very proud of it.’

  Briefly Alan’s mind had wandered off. What was he talking about?

  ‘Sorry, Richard, you’ve lost me: proud of what?’

  ‘The Reference Collections Middle Eastern project. Said it was very high profile and prestigious. To be honest he seemed to be thinking more about that, than the accident. Odd bloke, isn’t he?’