Worthless Remains

by Peter Helton

  ‘That’s because you’re an inverted middle-class snob who likes to pretend he has working-class tastes,’ Julie said in a matter-of-fact tone. She put down her paperback and turned to me. ‘The nighthawks were back last night. There’s two holes dug in the woods and two more on the lawn as well. We’ll need to organize a night watch.’

  ‘I’ll give it some thought,’ I promised.

  ‘They’re very strange nighthawks,’ Julie said. She reached into a breast pocket on her jacket and pulled out a small plastic bag. As she held it up for my inspection I could see it contained a coin and what looked like a bent piece of wire. ‘I found that in the spoil from the holes they dug. A third-century coin and the bronze pin from a brooch. I don’t know if they found something and left this behind or never even saw it, but it seems rather odd.’

  ‘I’ll give that some thought too,’ I said and moved on. As I did, Adam took up what sounded like a well-rehearsed argument between the two.

  ‘Inverted middle-class snob? I think what you meant to say was . . .’

  I left them to it and walked on, right around the Hall, stopping from time to time to sip my coffee and admire. I wondered how long it would take me to get bored of a huge house, ninety acres of land, swimming pool, sports car and Rolls Royce, as Mark Stoneking so obviously was. Just deciding on which bit of your football-pitch-sized lawn to laze around would surely kill some time.

  The roof repair team had arrived. They were a specialist outfit that had expertise in the repair of manor house and cathedral roofs and charged specialist prices, Stoneking had told me over breakfast. I could see them now, chatting to each other on walkie-talkies, workers on the roof, boss on the ground, Stoneking standing next to him. My mobile rang. It was Giles Haarbottle from Griffins insurance. ‘How are you progressing with Mike Dealey?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m sticking to him like glue,’ I said. ‘I’m watching his front door at the moment, been here for an hour already. Nothing’s moving but I don’t think he has spotted me watching his house.’

  ‘Well, he would find that rather difficult since you appear to be standing in front of Tarmford Hall drinking tea from a blue and white mug and chatting to me on the phone. I’m the chap sitting in his grey VW waving at you.’

  ‘Ah.’ I looked up. Sure enough Haarbottle was there, parked on the gravel next to my Citroën. I put my mobile away and walked over, frantically trying to think of a plausible explanation. I failed. This was one lie I couldn’t explain away. His window slid down and I leant jovially on his car roof for a chat. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

  ‘This pile of tottering masonry is insured with us. I’ve never been here, so I grabbed the chance to meet the famous man and have a look around. I had no idea Time Lines were digging the place up. Now explain why you are hanging around out here instead of watching Mike Dealey’s every move?’

  ‘I’m looking after Guy Middleton while they’re filming the dig here.’

  ‘How long?’ he asked menacingly.

  ‘End of the week. Then I’m back, full-time, shadowing Dealey.’

  Haarbottle grunted doubtfully. ‘What’s Guy Middleton like, then?’

  ‘Bit of a pain.’

  ‘Celebrities can be, I suppose. Mind you, Mr Stoneking seems very nice, but then we are handling his claim for the roof. Honeysett, have you ever actually been to Mike Dealey’s place?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely. And there’s nothing to do here today so I’ll go over in a minute and have another shot at him.’

  ‘You do that.’ He started the engine. ‘And for pity’s sake keep in touch, Honeysett. Do call, even if it’s only to lie to me.’

  ‘I promise.’ I put on my most sincere face and watched him drive away with my empty coffee mug on the roof of his car.

  I was true to my word. I told Annis I’d be away for a while and set off towards Bath with good intentions. These were soon somewhat diluted by the realization that I had no thermos of coffee to keep me company and also needed to stock up on munchable items to keep the hunger at bay and to keep my teeth from getting bored, which they frequently did when staring at houses out of the car window. I swung by the Thoughtful Bread Company in Green Park Station, got sidetracked into browsing for pickles while buying French butter and milk in town, dropped into Goodies deli in Larkhall for Parma ham and some goat’s cheese and by the time I fell through the door at Mill House with my shopping it was time for lunch anyway.

  Annis had been right, there was nothing but pinto beans left in the cupboards. My fat pay cheque from Time Lines would soon take care of the larder and an equally good-looking cheque from Griffins Insurance – always assuming I found Dealey was faking it – should make sure that it remained well-stocked for a while. In the meantime there were now four mouth-watering sheep standing in the meadow and I wondered if I should make the farmer an offer for them when I got paid.

  I rescued some of the herbs they hadn’t eaten, added them to some sweated onions, poured in three beaten eggs, dropped in a few pinto beans and crumbled goat’s cheese over the top. I left it on top of the stove until it was beginning to set then shoved it under a hot grill for a couple of minutes. Simple stuff really, this cooking lark. While I lunched on my frittata I called Tim at work.

  ‘How is your rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle?’ Tim asked.

  ‘Not all it’s cracked up to be,’ I said with my mouth full.

  ‘What are you eating?’ he demanded to know. I told him. ‘Sounds nice. It’s anaemic ham and cheese sandwiches here,’ he complained, ‘and there were no ketchup sachets left. I had to use tartare sauce to disguise the taste and half of it ran into my keyboard and now I have a bit of gherkin between D and F that doesn’t want to come out.’

  ‘Another tough day at the office.’

  ‘Is this just a courtesy call?’

  ‘No. There’s trouble up at the big house. Death threats, drugged whisky, poisoned food, blackmail and assorted night prowlers. Annis has been laid low with food poisoning but is recovering. It would be nice if we could see what went on in the dark up there.’

  ‘That can certainly be arranged. We have enough night-vision cameras to keep tabs on your prowlers. What are they on the prowl for?’

  ‘All sorts, I shouldn’t wonder. Among other things they are digging unauthorized holes in the ground. I fell into one.’

  ‘Big holes. What are they digging for?’

  ‘Anything worth flogging, one assumes; it’s now a known archaeological site. But there may be more to it than that, I just don’t know what yet.’

  ‘Why don’t I meet you after work? I could drop the gear off at Mill House or you could come round to my place.’

  ‘I’m not sure yet, I’ll be spending the day watching Mike Dealey’s house since there’s no filming today; everyone’s feeling too ill with a stomach bug. And anyway, you know I’m useless with electronic stuff, and Annis is feeling crap, so you will have to set the things up for us.’

  ‘Does that mean I’ll get to see Stoneking’s stately pile?’

  ‘Of course. Are you into Karmic Fire too?’

  ‘I loathe them with a passion. What an incoherent racket.’

  ‘I think Stoneking would agree with you but if you meet him don’t tell him I said so. Can I give you a few names?’ I rattled off a list of names I had copied from an insurance form left lying about by Cy. It included Andrea Clementi, the head archaeologist, Julie Rhymer and Adam Horspool, the two diggers, as well as some names from the production team. ‘See what you can find on them when you get a moment or two. I’ll call you after work.’

  The day remained cool and cloudy, perfect surveillance weather. The last thing you want is a bright sunny day where you get baked sitting in your car while your subject is lying in a deckchair out the back slurping iced drinks and going nowhere. I managed to find a space right at the top of Dealey’s road from where I could just see half his bungalow and his Honda parked outside. PC Whatsisname had been persuaded to furnish me with Mike
Dealey’s ex-directory number. He answered with ‘Hello’ on the second ring.

  ‘Hi, is Tamzin there?’ I gushed in my best teenage voice. ‘It’s Keenan.’

  ‘Tamzin? There’s no Tamzin here, mate.’

  ‘Sorry, wrong number.’ At least I knew he was in, or rather I knew someone was in, if I wanted to be scientific about it.

  Three hours later and I had eaten the sandwiches, finished the flask of coffee, snaffled the bag of cough sweets the last owner had left in the glove box and was now contemplating the nutritional value of my bubble pack of antacid tablets, my last edible option inside the car. I had jumped radio stations ad nauseam, fiddled with my phone and rearranged my card wallet. I was bored bored bored bored bored and I wasn’t even getting paid for this. If Dealey was genuine then I was simply wasting my time here. But just as I was getting the urge to bump my forehead against the steering wheel to see if the pain might alleviate the boredom there was movement.

  A silver Astra arrived and squeezed itself behind Dealey’s Honda on to the drive. A man got out. I took a picture, and a couple more as he rapped the door knocker on Dealey’s front door, then immediately let himself into the house with a key. Carer? Family, judging by his build. I zoomed into the picture on my SLR’s screen. Brother, I decided. Same hair, similar features but unencumbered by walrus moustache. I made a note of the car registration just in case.

  Well, that was positively exciting compared with the last three hours. Gloom descended once more as I imagined the conversation inside the house. Dealey: ‘Hi bro, fancy watching this entire box set of Downton Abbey?’ Bro: ‘I sure do, Mikey. Let’s just order in beer and pizzas and not move from the couch for days . . .’

  Twenty minutes of frustrated sighs and groans later the door opened and out came the Dealey brothers, Mike in his wheelchair. I started the engine and sank low in my seat as they got into their respective cars. Mike in his red Honda was leading the way, his brother followed and once they had passed my car I did a hasty three-point turn and tagged along. Hoping this would not be a five-hundred-mile run I kept a respectful distance from the silver Astra since even when sprayed a sensible black, a forty-year-old Citroën would make an unusual sight in their rear-view mirrors. But I needn’t have worried; we weren’t going far at all. A few turns left and right and finally left again and the convoy halted at the Cross Keys pub on the corner of Southstoke and Midford Roads. Mike parked his Honda on the forecourt, his brother found a space on the road opposite. I slid into a parking space on the quiet Southstoke Road and walked up to the front door just as the pair was negotiating the two stone steps. Close up I would have put money on the two being brothers. I watched the routine indignity suffered by the paraplegic as Mike was being bumped backwards up the steps in his wheelchair, then turned around in the tiny vestibule, after which he moved himself into the lounge on the right. I followed them inside. The place was quite busy for a midweek early evening. Mike’s brother moved a chair out of the way for him as they chose the second table along and I heard Mike say ‘Cheers, Tom’. Tom fetched two menus from the bar. I took one myself. Unfortunately the nearest unoccupied table to theirs was a few steps down into a further dining room from where I would have trouble overhearing their conversation but at least I could watch their table from there. Since it looked like they would be here for a while I called Tim; he had just got home.

  ‘Find me at the Cross Keys on the Midford Road,’ I told him.

  ‘I’ll bring the night-vision stuff with me.’

  The Dealey brothers became engrossed in the menu; I followed their example. The Cross Keys menu was as flowery as you could ask for. Here almost everything was ‘infused’ with one thing or another. It featured delights like half roasted lemon & herb chicken, which I hoped referred to the portion, not the cooking time; mysterious items like ‘prepared folded flat bread’ and ‘hand beer-battered onion rings’ as well as reassuringly 1970s nonsense like gammon topped with egg and pineapple.

  When Tom went to the bar to order food and drinks I went up too. They had both chosen the mega mixed grill (lamb chops, steak, gammon, chicken breast, sausage, black pudding, topped with two fried eggs, mushrooms, tomato, chips, peas and coleslaw as well as the famous hand beer-battered onion rings) while I chose the less dizzying pumpkin ravioli. I let Tom get ahead to join his brother and carried my beer slowly past their table. Mike was taking a good gulp of lager, then said temptingly: ‘There’s tons of ready meals in the freezer, too.’

  Tom sipped from his Guinness, licked the foam from his lips and said dismissively: ‘Yeah, all of it Indian, of course.’

  ‘No, no, not all of it,’ I heard Mike protest, then I was past them and out of earshot. I fished my mobile from my jacket and took a couple of stealthy shots of them, to later send to Haarbottle as proof that I was working hard on Griffins’ behalf, then settled back. It felt good to be away from the hotbed of resentment and strangeness that was Tarmford Hall. Even from this short distance away it looked like a theatre where an absurd play was being performed, or perhaps more than one play, running parallel across the same stage, intersecting here and there, towards an uncertain ending. Was there more than one playwright at work, more than one director? What was certain was that, perhaps with the exception of Carla, everyone thought they were the leading character. Or was I wrong about Carla? She seemed devoted to Mark Stoneking and had obviously been at Tarmford Hall for a while. Stoneking himself thought she was indispensible; did she think the same of herself? How much did Carla resent the intrusion of the Time Lines crew? Surely if it pleased Stoneking she would put up with it for a week without sabotaging it. Stoneking himself was torn between loving and hating the programme makers. It was the archaeology he liked and the TV circus he loathed. Olive Cunningham seemed to resent everything and everybody, and despite her age did swing a good stick. But was she mad enough to climb on to the roof of the Hall in a thunderstorm and put her shoulder to a stone urn weighing at least 150 pounds? Had some dishes at the Roman feast been deliberately poisoned? It was of course a cliché that poison was a female weapon but I couldn’t rule out a man’s hand in that either. Yet all my suspects had been taken ill . . .

  Tim’s arrival interrupted these pleasant musings. He acknowledged me with a nod of his woolly head, bought drinks at the bar and joined me at my table, putting a fresh pint in front of me.

  ‘Perfect timing,’ I said and drained my first pint, then started on the next.

  ‘You can never tell just from looking at them, can you?’ Tim said with a tiny nod in the direction of the brothers.

  ‘Quite. If someone unequivocally said to you that those two were up to no good you’d soon find things that looked suspicious, yet if someone said, “Those are the Dealey brothers, really nice guys”, then you’d see the opposite. My problem is that I want him to be guilty. Because there’s money in it.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Seven and a half.’

  ‘Not bad money for sitting in the pub,’ Tim acknowledged.

  ‘Yeah, well, it has its moments.’ This was one of them, since just then the waitress arrived with two enormous oval platters for the Dealey brothers. The barbecue aroma of their grill carried all the way to our table. A minute later the waitress reappeared and brought my own colourful plate of food.

  ‘What is that?’ Tim said doubtfully.

  ‘Pumpkin ravioli and salad,’ I said defensively.

  Tim groaned. ‘You’re incorrigible. Why couldn’t you have ordered something real like those two?’

  ‘Because you’d have pinched half of it?’

  ‘Well, you have certainly nothing to fear from me with your rabbit food.’

  ‘I had rabbit food yesterday, too. You would have liked it; it had a rabbit in it. Did you have time to find out anything about the menagerie at Tarmford Hall?’

  ‘Some.’ He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from his jeans and smoothed it out on the table where it absorbed some beer spillage. ‘Right, Cy Shovlin, yo
ur producer. He seems totally unremarkable. Started in children’s telly like they all do, did local telly, then a couple of pilots for history documentaries that sank without a trace. Time Lines is his big break but his ambition is limitless, apparently.’

  ‘Yes, I believe that.’

  ‘Those two production workers I could find nothing on apart from various credits for TV work, all nuts-and-bolts stuff; both have been on the programme from the start. Mags Morrison, your director, has also been there from day one. She worked her way up through cookery shows and some docu drama – you won’t have heard of them since you don’t have a telly. The archaeologist, Andrea Clementi, she’s quite a big cheese at Cambridge when she’s not doing this, specializing in something or other, I didn’t write it down, it had too many letters. She gets some flak in the press for being on a populist show.’

  ‘Are there any suspicions that things on the show might be rigged?’

  ‘Like what?’ Tim said, squinting at his piece of paper where his felt-tip writing was fast dissolving in beer stains.

  ‘Like artefacts being brought in from elsewhere so they can be found on camera?’

  ‘Not that I saw. I don’t think her integrity is in question in that way. It’s probably envy of the telly money that prompts the criticism anyway.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘Julie Somebody, my ink is running . . .’

  ‘Rhymer,’ I supplied, spearing a pillow of ravioli.

  ‘Field archaeologist, studied in Bristol, got her degree two years ago, volunteered on the programme during her degree, got a paid job last year. The chap, Adam Horspool, is fresh from Cambridge, must have studied with the Clementi woman. Perhaps she got him the job.’

  ‘I’m sure half her students would give their right arm to get on telly with her; must be quite a queue.’

  ‘And that’s your lot, I think,’ he said and crumpled up the paper. Tim’s filing system is worse than mine. ‘Did it help?’

  ‘Not yet. I don’t feel I’m learning much either by watching those two put away half a farmyard. They must have digestive systems made of steel.’