Worthless Remains

by Peter Helton

  The dabbing had the effect of launching half a dozen programs and dialogue boxes all over the screen. By the time I had restored a sticky kind of order to things and my three screens were back, the figure I had seen through the windscreen had disappeared. And then like magic it reappeared, there on the extreme left of the infrared screen. Was it the same figure or a different one? At the moment it was standing still. It appeared to be wearing a wide-brimmed hat à la Guy Middleton. The next moment two things happened: the figure that had been standing quite still made a sudden movement, then something dark interposed itself between camera and the person with the hat and a second later the figure was sprawled on the ground, not moving.

  Another second and I was out of the car and running across the lawn into what felt like a pot of ink. I stopped, fumbled my Maglite from my pocket, then ran on by its dancing light past the spoil heap, the mosaic trench, the smaller trench and on towards the sweet chestnut trees. Then I found him. He was lying face down on the grass, not moving. In the light from my little torch it looked much worse than it had on the screen. Bright blood from his head wound mingled with the rainwater. His hat was lying nearby. I picked it up. It was Guy’s, I should know; I had been wearing it the night before. I knelt down. My hand trembled as I felt around for a pulse at his bloodied neck. I felt here and there – where were you supposed to find it? And then I did.

  Paul was still alive.

  THIRTEEN

  Once I knew ambulance and police were on their way I was nevertheless left with a dilemma. I needed to alert the house so that the gate might be opened but I also could not leave Paul lying injured in the rain. Whoever attacked him might come back and finish him off properly. Should I move him into the recovery position? Should you move people with head injuries at all? And what exactly did the recovery position look like? I covered him with my jacket to keep him warm.

  I realized that I didn’t have a single phone number to alert the Time Lines team or the house. I called Annis on her mobile. ‘I found the cameraman badly injured and unconscious in the grounds. I’ve called for an ambulance. I need you to raise Carla so she can open the gates to let them in. I could also do with blankets and umbrellas and some lights would probably help as well.’

  ‘We’re on our way.’

  In my mind’s eye I could see Annis, freckled and naked, next to Tim’s hairy and athletic body, as they got dressed. It was the ‘we’ in her response that, even in this crisis and after all these years of our strange little triangle of a relationship, managed to send a small sting of jealousy through me. I didn’t have long to ponder it; lights came on all over the house, then Tim and Annis, soon followed by Stoneking, came running to where I stood waving my Maglite. They brought blankets and umbrellas and Stoneking carried a large yellow torch. We made Paul as dry and protected as was possible by putting an umbrella by his head and laying blankets over him. He hadn’t stirred once or made a sound, which worried me.

  ‘I saw it happen on the infrared screen, looked like someone clouted him from behind,’ I said.

  ‘Did you see what they looked like?’ Stoneking asked.

  ‘No, it was right at the edge of the screen.’

  ‘Pity.’ He swept the torch beam up and down the ground. ‘Can’t see any kind of implement lying about.’

  ‘Don’t go looking for it,’ I warned him. ‘The police are going to be unhappy enough with all of us trampling the ground around here. Whatever it was, it’s probably in the lake now anyway.’ Now more figures appeared silhouetted against the light in the French windows. ‘Probably best if not everyone comes down here now.’ I could see one cagouled figure coming towards us already.

  Stoneking handed me the torch. ‘I’ll shoo them back into the house. Nothing I can do here anyway.’

  It was not long afterwards that the ambulance drove on to the lawn with blue flashing beacons, bathing us all in light from its headlamps. The paramedics briefly asked who he was and what had happened while they got oxygen to Paul and a drip into his arm, but otherwise they focussed on the victim. By the time they were ready to move him into the ambulance two uniformed police officers with torches were walking towards us and behind them, inevitably, strolled Superintendent Michael Needham. He was wearing a black raincoat over his suit but no hat. When he stepped into the beam of the ambulance headlights I could see he was not a happy man, but apparently his unhappiness had deeper roots than not enjoying getting wet at three in the morning.

  ‘Honeysett, I would have put money on you standing next to the victim. And now you have brought the rest of the gang with you,’ he growled. ‘It was inevitable, I suppose.’ He exchanged a few words with the paramedic men who had now lifted Paul into the back of the ambulance, then, as they drove off in a wide circle across the lawn, turned his attention back to us. ‘Let me begin by thanking you for trampling all over the crime scene and thereby making our work so much harder. Can we all walk away from here in the direction the ambulance took?’ We followed him some twenty yards towards the house, then he started on us. ‘Okay, who found the body?’ I put my hand up to that, knowing that in the police handbook called Three Easy Steps to Solve a Murder whoever reported the finding of a body shot right to the top of the suspect list. ‘Anyone with you?’ he asked, looking at Tim and Annis.

  ‘No, those two were . . . asleep at the time,’ I said.

  ‘Right, start explaining what you were doing out here in the middle of the night, in the rain, on your own . . .’

  I explained. I explained the nighthawks, the nightly comings and goings. I left out the greenhouse full of cannabis and how it attracted visits from the diggers and also failed to mention Guy being blackmailed – I could claim client confidentiality as an excuse there – but I did explain the cameras in the trees. I also mentioned that the hat Paul had been wearing was in fact Guy Middleton’s. ‘In the dark it would have been easy to assume that one was clobbering Middleton when in fact one was braining someone else wearing his trademark hat.’ Even by torchlight I could tell that Annis was giving me a meaningful look. I didn’t mention but I hadn’t forgotten that only last night it was me masquerading as Guy Middleton under that hat.

  ‘Then why the hell was . . .’ Needham searched for the name and found it ‘. . . Mr Fosse wearing it tonight?’

  ‘I saw the hat lying in the drawing room earlier,’ I lied. ‘For some reason Paul decided to borrow it.’ In truth I had left Guy’s hat and jacket in the drawing room on my return to the Hall the night before. Guy had remained groaning and moaning in bed all day so there the hat had probably stayed until Paul decided to put it on.

  More police arrived, a lot more police, both plain-clothed and uniformed. Generators and arc lights were being set up; a forensics van drove on to the lawn. Watching the ghostly army of white-suited scene-of-crime officers from the downstairs windows of the Hall were the entire VIP crew. A growing group of diggers and geo-physics technicians were gathering on the lower edge of the lawn, held back by a police constable in a yellow high-vis jacket. I was made to point out the location of the cameras and after a forensics technician had taken a good look at the laptop in my car he promptly confiscated it.

  ‘Over here, Super,’ a SOCO called to Needham from beside the hedge along the greenhouse.

  Needham, himself wearing crime-scene gear now, strode across. Soon he was back. ‘Looks like we have a good candidate for the weapon. A spade, chucked into the hedge. It has fresh blood and hair on it. I’ve no doubt it will match. Okay, you and I,’ he pointed a latex-gloved forefinger at my nose, ‘will have a private little chat. Do they serve coffee in this dump?’

  A short while later Needham and I sat down with a cafetière of coffee and some biscuits courtesy of Carla. I made an inviting arm gesture. ‘There you are, Mike, it’s Mr Honeysett in the library with a candlestick.’

  Needham sniffed as he looked the place over, wrinkling his nose at the stuffed alligator and Indian statuary. ‘Not what I expected to see in a rock star’s mansi
on.’

  ‘All courtesy of the previous owners. What did you expect?’

  ‘Not sure, come to think of it.’ Then his eyes fell on the musket hanging on the wall above the fireplace. ‘He’d better have a licence for that thing,’ he growled.

  ‘He’s got a couple of fine shotguns in his gun locker.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  Of course he did; what had I been thinking? At the first sign of trouble at Tarmford Hall the computer would have spat out the information about firearms licensed to the homeowner. Needham was merely looking for an opportunity on which to vent his displeasure. And I was it.

  ‘This whole thing stinks,’ he said emphatically. ‘That’s the second attack now. I have a mind to scoop up the lot of you and put an end to this palaver. The last victim, the re-enactor that got himself shot with the bolt, is recovering, though still in hospital, but this one looks bad. I spoke to the paramedics. Now I’m aware he was wearing the TV chappie’s hat and that Middleton wasn’t universally popular, but did Paul Fosse have any enemies himself?’

  ‘Not that I know of. He’s the main camera operator, he seemed okay. Mind you, he wasn’t a great fan of Guy Middleton’s, so pinching his hat was probably just sticking two fingers up to him. Apart from the fact that it was still raining.’

  ‘Why would he wander about the place in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep? Visiting one of the diggers in her tent? Perhaps he was looking for nighthawks and found them – that’s what my money is on. There is one other thing. Did you know the mechanical digger was sabotaged?’

  ‘No one mentioned it.’

  ‘It was. Someone poured water in the tank. Now if you wanted to sabotage this dig then bashing Guy Middleton’s head in would probably work. But then so would laying low the cameraman, although I’ve no doubt the producer has already screamed down the phone for a replacement.’

  Needham slowly nodded his head, digesting it, then sighed. ‘This coffee is pretty good. That’s the one thing I can say for you, Chris, wherever you are a good cup of coffee is never far away. How do you manage it? Wherever I am there’s usually brown water in a polystyrene beaker.’ He poured himself another cup and proceeded to shovel sugar into it. ‘The figure you saw coming from the house. Was it Paul Fosse?’

  ‘Couldn’t say.’

  ‘Think!’ he barked. ‘Hat? Did you see the hat? It’s pretty distinctive.’

  ‘I didn’t see them clearly at all.’

  ‘You’re useless, Honeysett. Call yourself a detective.’

  ‘I was miles away in my car and it was dark and raining and I had just poured a mug of coffee into my laptop.’

  ‘Really? You’re not supposed to do that, I’m told.’

  ‘I’m aware of it. But it’s still working and one of your chaps has confiscated it.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Is it?’

  There was a knock on the door, immediately followed by a plain-clothed officer I had not seen before. He was a tall and eager-looking man in his mid-thirties with tightly curled brown hair; he wore a brown leather jacket and reminded me of an Airedale terrier.

  ‘What is it, Reid?’ Needham asked. DI Reid, who as it turned out was the superintendent’s new sidekick, stayed by the door and beckoned Needham who went to have a murmured exchange. The officer left and Needham turned to me. ‘We have just made an arrest.’

  ‘Really? That was quick. Who?’

  ‘We arrested Mark Stoneking.’

  ‘Really? You think he clobbered Paul Fosse?’

  ‘No. But his greenhouse is full of cannabis.’

  ‘Oh, that.’

  Needham had lifted his coffee cup but set it down again hard. ‘Oh, that?’ he boomed. ‘Are you telling me you knew about it but didn’t think it worth mentioning?’

  I tried to look innocent. ‘Erm, well, I wasn’t completely sure they were cannabis plants. I mean how would I know?’

  ‘Don’t give me that. I wasn’t born yesterday and neither were you.’

  ‘Well, I happen to be of the opinion that an Englishman ought to be able to grow what he likes in his greenhouse as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone.’

  ‘You can opine all you want; it’s illegal and I’m going to throw the book at Stoneking. Just because you’re rich and surrounded by acres of land doesn’t mean you’re above the law.’

  ‘I don’t think Stoneking knows about those plants.’

  ‘That’s just what he said, apparently. What makes you think he didn’t know?’

  ‘Because he’s not a pothead and it didn’t look like a professional cannabis factory. I think that’s his gardener growing himself a year’s supply of the stuff.’

  ‘Right, I’ll have him. Where is he?’

  ‘You already have him. He’s Sam Gower and he’s doing time.’

  ‘Sam Gower rings a bell.’ Then he remembered. ‘The Bristol Bullion robbery, he was the driver.’

  ‘He’s now Stoneking’s rehabilitated gardener.’

  ‘Rehabilitated? I beg to differ.’

  ‘He’s inside for some ancient burglary you lot fingered him for.’

  ‘DNA, don’t you just love it?’

  ‘Due to be released this week.’

  Needham smiled grimly. ‘Into my open arms.’

  It was the arms of Morpheus I wanted to sink into but when after another hour of bickering I eventually opened the door to my room Annis and Tim were once more asleep. Our rickety triangle had never included any hint of three-in-a-bedness so I grumbled downstairs again and made myself uncomfortable on a sofa in the drawing room, just as the first finger of dawn touched the sky above Tarmford Hall. A few short hours later I woke with creaking joints and a back that refused to properly straighten up. Feeling ancient and hard done by, I followed the smell of coffee to the dining room. With the exception of Paul, Annis and Tim, everyone who stayed at the house was here; there was a new face sitting next to the sad-eyed soundman who I presumed must be the new camera operator. Apart from the newcomer everyone looked as tired as I felt, having all been forced to stay up and give statements. I had tried to subdue my hair on the way to breakfast but had obviously failed because Stoneking, who had been reluctantly released on bail by Needham, looked up from attacking a sausage on his plate and said: ‘Not another one who had bad dreams. Did you see eerie green lights too and hear whisperings in your dreams?’

  ‘Not me. Who did?’

  ‘I did,’ Middleton said through clenched teeth. ‘And I wish people would stop trying to make fun of it. I was not dreaming. I woke up and there was a strange green light in my room and someone was whispering.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ I said and meant it. ‘What were they whispering?’

  ‘I couldn’t make out any words but it was menacing and when I tried to switch on the bedside lamp it didn’t work.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Well, I . . . er . . . I . . . er . . . hid under the sheets.’ Giggles rippled round the room. ‘I know, I know, you all think it’s pathetic but I would like to see you wake up and find a strange presence in your room!’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘It disappeared. Eventually I put the central light on and there was nothing. I had put the chair against the door; no one could have come in that way.’

  ‘Told you the place is haunted,’ Stoneking said.

  ‘You didn’t see the ghost of a girl, did you?’ Emms said, suppressing a laugh. ‘Perhaps she wanted her drawing of a horse’s head back.’

  Middleton kicked his chair back impatiently. ‘You’re not funny, Emms.’ I thought he would storm out but all he did was get himself some scrambled egg which he slapped angrily on to his plate. ‘Last night someone hit Paul over the head while he was wearing my hat. What if someone thought that was me? What if it was me they were after?’

  ‘No one expected you to be out there,’ I said reasonably. ‘No one waited out there for you with a shovel on the off-chance you might turn
up in the middle of the night. Paul probably went looking for nighthawks and when he ran into them they laid him out.’

  ‘Then maybe it serves him right for wearing my hat without asking,’ he said prissily.

  Perhaps it was wise to change the subject. ‘Is there any news of Paul?’

  ‘Yes, he was briefly conscious,’ said Emms. ‘I called the hospital a few minutes ago. They think it’s a good sign but he’s out cold again.’

  ‘Did he say who hit him?’

  ‘He didn’t say much apparently. His skull isn’t broken but he has a slight swelling on his brain. His chances are good, though.’

  I looked surreptitiously round the table, looking for any out-of-place reactions but everyone just got on with their breakfast, giving nothing away. The new camera operator, whose name was Keith, looked benevolently from one speaker to the other, probably wondering if taking over from Paul had been such a wise move. In his shoes I would have too.

  Emms reached for another croissant from the basket on the table. ‘Now I know everyone’s tired and it’s a bit of a shock of course about Paul, but we have to crack on.’

  ‘Too right,’ Cy said. ‘We can’t afford any more delays.’

  Andrea Clementi shrugged. ‘We’ll be fine. The diggers probably got as much sleep as they get on any other night. It’s us oldies who are going to feel a bit second-hand come this afternoon.’

  As if by way of demonstration we could all see Adam come jogging up the lawn towards the house. He ran up to the window, shielding his eyes with one hand against the glass and tapping excitedly against it with the other. Stoneking opened the window.

  ‘There are three more holes dug by the nighthawks,’ said Adam breathlessly. ‘At two of them they left coins behind again. But the third one you’d better have a look yourselves.’

  Andrea lifted her dark eyebrows. ‘We’re having our breakfast, Adam. Don’t be mysterious; just tell us what it is.’

  ‘Human remains.’

  Keith the cameraman was the first out of the starting blocks, closely followed by the sad-eyed soundman. Andrea seemed delighted, telling Adam she’d be there as soon as she had finished her grapefruit, but Emms looked less excited. She turned to Stoneking and me, the only outsiders, and explained. ‘It’s a distraction. Archaeologically it’s interesting but in terms of the programme it’ll throw our schedule even further off course. It’s bound to have nothing to do with the Roman villa. And it’ll mean higher post-production costs. Everything we find has to be logged and analysed and endlessly written up, long after the filming is finished. Mind you, the kids will love a skeleton.’