‘What you’ve lost is your mind, dumbass,’ he whispered to himself as he crept downstairs. By the time he got outside they had all disappeared, but if he was right then he didn’t need to see them to know where they were going.
He caught up with them by the Bumping Stone and watched from hiding in a side street, though they weren’t paying the slightest attention to anything about the modern world around them. It was late, but not so late that there wasn’t the occasional passing car or pedestrian. Maybe Hester’s people simply weren’t interested. Maybe they couldn’t see because, locked in an eternity after death, the ritual they were enacting was so old and removed from the petty present that they were incapable of perceiving anything so transient as now. If they were really over six hundred years old, his fourteen-year life must seem as brief and meaningless as a mayfly.
The world of the now couldn’t see them, that was certain. He watched a car pass, its headlights picking out the stone and everything surrounding it except the shadowy revenants who crowded close about. The light slid straight through them. Toby didn’t know why he could see both. It was like seeing overlapping images, or being at the centre point of two intersecting sets in a Venn diagram.
Then they turned, apparently done with their business, and moved off into the suburban streets on the southern outskirts of Haleswell, away from the village and much further than he was expecting. He’d assumed that the original villagers of Haleswell would have disposed of their murdered neighbours where they fell on the parish boundary and that the unquiet spirits would return to that spot if anywhere, but they were way past that now and still going. Haleswell was right on the edge of the city; in a few streets there would be nothing but fields.
Then he saw the signs for the Clegg Farm estate where his dad worked, and they were walking past clean, new houses with tidy gardens and shining cars in the driveways to the barrier fence which marked the edge of the active construction site. Hester and Her people walked right through it and disappeared into the labyrinth of skeletal buildings.
A terrible, wonderful suspicion began to grow in Toby’s mind.
He ran all the way back home, letting himself into the house as quietly as his escalating excitement would allow, dragged onto the floor of his room all of Mrs Drummond’s old maps and spread them out like a second carpet. She had originals going back to the First World War and reproductions going back further than that – the earliest was dated 1731, which still left a gap of almost four hundred years since Hester’s time, but that wasn’t an issue because towns didn’t shrink, did they? If the thing he was looking for wasn’t there in 1731 it wouldn’t have been there in 1349 either. He’d been looking for the wrong thing: evidence of a mass grave somewhere close to the parish boundary. What he should have been looking for was quite literally further afield, and it had been staring him in the face so obviously that his own stupidity stunned him.
Clegg Farm. Clegeham.
He traced it through the maps, scrabbling across the floor on his hands and knees. It had been there in the sixties when the post-war building boom had created estates like the Willows, and before that in the 1860s when houses had been built along Pestle Road nearby, and woodland before that, and probably never built on since Haleswell and Clegeham had been two separate villages.
He checked and double-checked everything before running into his parents’ bedroom and waking them by shouting, ‘Mum! Dad! I got it wrong! She’s not been going back to Her grave – She’s been going home!’
* * *
‘But that doesn’t make sense,’ said Natalie Markes. ‘I saw the archaeologist’s report. I signed off on it. It was an empty field; nothing there.’
‘Wait,’ interrupted Trish. ‘You mean that you suspected it at least?’
‘No. Yes. Sort of. It’s complicated.’
‘Then uncomplicate it for me.’
The day after Rogation Sunday was the spring bank holiday and they were driving to Peter’s parents in Coventry, and Natalie’s voice on the phone kept dropping in and out as the signal varied. Trish really should have called before they’d left, but in the whirlwind of the Beating festivities she’d completely forgotten about the traditional family visit and so the morning had been a mad rush, not helped by them having been up half the night trying to get a coherent story out of Toby. He was slumped in the back of the car, having made plain his incredulity and disgust that they could possibly be thinking about going to his grandparents’ place given everything else that was happening, but Trish had been firm: ghostly curses or no ghostly curses, a bank holiday meant a visit to the relatives.
‘Any new build needs planning permission, yes?’ said Natalie.
‘Obviously.’
‘Well that gets handled at council level, and part of the application process means running it past the county archaeologist’s office in case there’s the danger of damaging anything heritage-worthy. Sometimes they look at the plans and decide that they want to have a look under there, which they obviously did in the case of Clegg Farm, probably for exactly the same reason that Toby spotted. So they ask for a pre-determination assessment – which is basically dig a trench, have a look, write a report.’
‘Which they did.’
‘Which I did!’ said Markes. ‘This is what I do! We picked an archaeological contractor from the council’s list, hired a digger, cut trenches where they told us and the contractor wrote a report saying that there was nothing under there. That would have been a year and a half ago. Planning department gave us permission for the development and boom, here we are.’
‘Is there any chance I could see that report? It’s not confidential, is it?’
‘No, but it is quite technical. I’m not sure how much use it’s going to be.’
‘What about the archaeologist – the one you hired? Can I speak to them?’
‘Of course, if you want. I’ll text you his contact details.’
‘Thanks.’
A few minutes later Natalie’s text came through with a PDF of the archaeologist’s report and a link to his website: Lewis Simms Archaeology, an independent archaeological consultant providing reliable and cost-effective services for planning officials and building contractors, and, as she suspected with most small independent specialists, he was operating out of an office in his home, because the postal contact was a residential address: 3 Andrews Coppice, Clegg Farm Estate, Haleswell, B90 3SN.
Trish didn’t need to read any of the report further than the first page, where Lewis Simms had listed himself as consultant with an entirely different address in Sparkbrook. It seemed that at some time in the eighteen months between being contracted to write the pre-determination report for Haleswell Village Trust and today, he’d moved into a nice new house close to the countryside, courtesy of, drum roll please, Haleswell Village Trust.
She texted Natalie back:
thx 4 this.
Then she hesitated, wondering how far she could trust the director of property and development, before deciding that it really didn’t matter one way or the other and adding:
What if they had found something? Would that have affected development? Delays?
Certainly.
Delays costly?
Always. £££.
Refusal of planning permission entirely???
Potentially yes but depends on how much there.
How about a whole medieval village?
There was no reply to that for long moments during which she watched the motorway traffic and the landscape unroll past the car.
Then Natalie’s response came:
I’ll get back to you on this.
Be careful. Maybe not mention this to Nash.
Natalie sent her a thumbs-up. Trish put her phone away and continued to stare out at the passing countryside.
Peter glanced at her. ‘Everything okay?’
She shook herself as if waking up. ‘Yes, why?’
‘You’ve got that frown.’
‘It’s nothing.
Just Trust issues.’
27
PRE-DETERMINATION
NATALIE MADE SURE THAT HER ID LANYARD WAS straight and put on her best Trustee smile before knocking on the door to 3 Andrews Coppice. It opened onto a tall and slender man somewhere in his forties, greying stylishly about the temples and dressed in exercise gear.
‘Hello, Mr Simms?’
‘Yes?’
‘My name is Natalie Markes. I work for Haleswell Village Trust. I don’t know if you remember, but you did some work for us last year? On this very site, as a matter of fact. I’m sorry to trouble you on the long weekend, but I was hoping you could help me with a quick question.’
He had a broad smile with lots of very even teeth. ‘Of course I remember – please, come in! And call me Lewis.’
She was welcomed into a home which was open and bright, furnished with an eye towards stylish minimalism but without being spartan. Large abstract tapestries and framed fabric works were placed carefully about the walls, giving warmth without clutter. At the breakfast bar of the open-plan living room a younger man with skin the colour of toasted cinnamon had the back off a computer and was prodding it with a screwdriver.
‘This is my partner, Cal,’ said Simms.
‘Pleased to meet you.’ They shook hands.
‘We were just talking about you actually,’ said Simms. ‘Or rather the village festival yesterday. Completely fantastic. There aren’t that many places which have that sense of tradition anymore.’
‘I’m glad you enjoyed it. Hopefully you’ll both stay to enjoy it for many years to come.’
‘Can I get you a tea? Coffee?’
‘Thank you but no – this really is a flying visit.’
‘No problem then. Shall we go into the office?’
‘Actually I was rather hoping that we might talk about this in your back garden? It’s such a nice day. Minor miracle for a bank holiday, it seems a shame to waste it.’
With a slight frown of puzzlement he agreed and led the way through the house to a garden dominated by a patio obviously intended for entertaining large groups, with a table, many chairs, a chimenea for the winter and a barbecue that looked like it could run a small restaurant.
‘What a lovely space!’ she said. ‘I hope you had no trouble having it fitted?’
‘Uh, no – is there any reason why we would have?’
‘Oh I don’t know,’ she replied airily. ‘You find all kinds of odd things in the ground when you start digging, don’t you, Lewis?’
Simms’ frown deepened and he went very still. ‘I’m not sure what you’re getting at.’
She turned to face him squarely. ‘Then I’ll be clearer. Eighteen months ago you submitted a pre-determination report to me, which I accepted in good faith, in which you concluded that there was no evidence of previous human habitation on this site, but I’ve since found good reason to believe you were lying. Now before you say anything,’ she continued, as she saw him start to puff up defensively, ‘let me just point out that it would be the easiest thing in the world for me to find out exactly when you bought this house, under what kind of financial terms, and whether or not you received any kind of preferential treatment. It would also be very easy for me to commission a second assessment of the part of the site which is still undeveloped, and, assuming I find what I suspect to be there, to call into question your competence and integrity with the Institute of Archaeologists. Frankly, I’m not interested in getting you into trouble. You seem like a nice man. And anything you tell me now will remain strictly confidential, but I really would like to know: what did you hide? Are there the remains of a medieval village underneath this site?’
Throughout her speech he’d turned increasingly scarlet and now looked like he was on the verge of bursting into tears. ‘Oh God, yes, all right!’ he said, his voice thick. ‘But there was no way I would ever have been able to afford a place like this otherwise! And your chief executive Mr Nash offered me such a good deal! And it made me sick, honestly it made me sick!’
‘I believe you,’ she said, and it was true. ‘I checked your references back then and you struck me as a decent man and I don’t think this is a thing you would have done lightly. You just wanted a proper home for you and Cal, and I understand how persuasive Mr Nash can be. But here’s what I’m not so sure about: were you so sick that maybe you did a bit of quiet looking around on your own? You know, once the diggers had started excavating the foundations, maybe you went through the spoil heaps at the end of the day to see if there was anything you could rescue?’
Simms was staring at her with a combination of awe and embarrassment, as if she were a stage hypnotist who had just made him squawk like a chicken. ‘Do you want to see?’ he asked.
‘I’d be honoured if you showed me.’
He led her back through the house and into his office. Aside from the computer, noticeboard and bookshelves, there were photographs of him on various digs all over the world looking young and sunburnt and happy, and a large set of wide shallow drawers of the kind usually found in museum storerooms. He unlocked the unit and pulled out one of the drawers, and she gasped at what he’d found.
There were potsherds, belt buckles, nails, coins, beads, spoons, knives, scraps of cloth, and even a leather shoe, all in plastic grip-seal bags – physical remains of the village of Clegeham which had disappeared so many years ago. She wondered if any of this had belonged to Hester, if She’d touched it as a living, breathing child. Then she recognised something from Trish’s story of what Toby saw: a stick like an old-fashioned wooden ruler, but with notches cut all down one side.
‘What’s this?’ she asked, pointing.
‘It’s a tally stick,’ he replied. ‘A way of keeping accounts without having to use written records.’
‘May I please borrow it?’
‘I’m not really in a position to say no, am I?’
‘I promise to look after it and return it to you if I can.’
He hesitated at the last moment before handing it over. ‘You will be careful with it, won’t you? You won’t… sell it, or anything like that?’
‘Why on earth would I do that?’
‘Mr Nash. He asked me to keep an eye out for anything which might be, you know. Valuable. Just as a favour, he said.’
‘Dear God.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘This just gets better.’
‘I know, I know—’ he started to apologise.
‘Oh it’s not you, Lewis. Don’t worry, you’re not the one who needs to apologise.’
* * *
‘Well?’
Nash stared at the tally stick on the round pub table in front of him as if it were something about to rise up and bite him. ‘This is utterly preposterous,’ he snorted.
The Trustees were meeting in the function room upstairs at the White Hart, which was designed to resemble an eighteenth-century gentlemen’s club, with hunting prints on the walls and heavily upholstered armchairs. Trish had insisted that both Peter and Toby attend, so Nash had refused to let them use their usual meeting room in Manor House as there couldn’t be an official minuted agenda. Alan Pankowicz had offered drinks on the house (Toby was allowed nothing stronger than a lemonade shandy, despite his protests), and to any stranger entering the room it would have seemed like nothing more than an afternoon drink between friends.
‘Which bit is preposterous?’ replied Anik Singh, Director of Human Resources. ‘The bit where this is evidence of Her home being right under your precious development? Or the bit where you get someone to bury a report that could damage it by bribing them with a whole bloody house?’
‘We can’t be sure that place has any significance for Her…’
‘Other than all the injured chippies who have tried to work there, of course,’ interrupted Peter, but Nash ploughed on as if he hadn’t spoken.
‘For all we know this could be a setup; She could have been leading Toby on. I mean how do we know he saw anything in the first place? Kid was probably high o
n spice or monkey dust or whatever it is they’re snorting these days.’
‘Oh you did not just go there…’ Peter growled, getting to his feet.
‘Oh yes I did,’ grinned Nash, pushing back his chair. ‘Care to come with me?’
Trish pushed Peter back down while Natalie kicked the leg of Nash’s chair. ‘We’re not going to let you derail this into an argument,’ said Natalie, and Nash shrugged as if to say Well you can’t blame a man for trying. ‘You owe us an explanation of why you kept this information from us.’
‘Why I kept it from you? Why do you think? Because there are some people around this table afflicted with an excess of conscience, who would like nothing more than to run every hiccup and setback through a committee and allow Trust business to get bogged down in paperwork from external agencies. Because they don’t have the first clue about what we have to deal with on a daily basis. This is life and death for us, or have you forgotten that?’
‘None of us have forgotten that,’ said Esme Barlow with quiet venom. She was onto her second large gin and showed no signs of stopping any time soon.
‘Good! Then perhaps you more than anyone will appreciate that there’s a time for procedure and discussion, and there’s a time for swift and strong leadership. Sometimes things simply need to get done. Isn’t that why you voted for me to be chief executive?’
Sean Trevorrow downed the rest of his pint. ‘I swear to God, if you tell us that we “can’t handle the truth” I will glass you.’
‘You all know what sort of a knife edge the Trust’s finances are on,’ Nash continued. ‘If anything had happened to delay the Clegg Farm deal and those investors had pulled out we’d have been in a hole so deep none of us would have seen the light of day again. Besides,’ he added, ‘it’s not as if I didn’t tell anybody.’
Donna Russell swallowed a large mouthful of wine and ahemmed. Natalie stared at her. ‘Wait – you knew?’
Russell gave curt nod. ‘Yes. And he was right.’
The Plague Stones Page 20
