The Hidden Bones

by Nicola Ford

  Clare couldn’t help thinking that Jo would have known what that meant. ‘Is she going to be OK?’

  ‘It’s too early to say for sure. Her ribs will heal in time and we’ve cleaned and pinned the fractured femoral shaft. The depressed cranial fracture is the biggest risk. The good news is that we’ve managed to remove all of the bone fragments cleanly. So now it’s just a question of waiting to see.’

  Clare asked, ‘Can we see her?’

  ‘We’re going to need to keep her sedated for a while, I’m afraid, and then we’ll need to run some tests. I’m very sorry; that’s really all I can tell you at the moment.’

  As soon as the doctor departed, Clare blew her nose loudly on the tissue, trying to clear her head. Margaret reached forward and touched David on the leg. He bent down to listen to her. ‘Why don’t you take Clare outside to get some fresh air? I’ll stay here.’

  He looked at her, uncertainty written across his face.

  Margaret offered a reassuring smile. ‘If anything happens, I’ll come and find you.’

  David guided Clare towards the front doors of the hospital. But outside, darkness had already fallen, and the wind and rain were battering against the windows. So they settled for a hot drink in the RVS shop.

  He stirred his tea with a plastic swizzle stick. ‘I phoned Sally earlier to see if she’d heard anything.’

  Sally Treen was the last person Clare wanted to talk about, but it seemed churlish to dwell on her own feelings given what Jo was going through. She stared down into her cup, unable to muster any enthusiasm for the subject. ‘Oh?’

  He went to take a sip of his tea, but set it down again as soon as his lips touched the steaming brown liquid. ‘Their take on it is that it was probably an uninsured driver or someone who’s been disqualified. It happens a lot, apparently – and we get more than our fair share with Swindon on our doorstep.’

  She fiddled with the wrapper of the Kit Kat David had insisted on buying her, but she felt no inclination either to eat it or to respond to him.

  ‘When Margaret phoned and told me about Jo, I shot up to site to take a look for myself before coming over here.’ She looked up, attentive now. ‘The visibility was crap, but the police signs were still up so it was easy enough to find where it happened. There’s a damn great hole in the hedge where Jo was rammed through it.’

  She felt sick just thinking about it. It must have shown.

  ‘Come on, have a sip of your tea.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘The verge was pretty churned up, but I could make out the tyre marks clearly enough.’ He pulled his phone from his jacket pocket and tapped the screen a couple of times before handing it to her. ‘Take a look.’

  She sat motionless, staring at the image on the tiny screen. ‘Does this mean what I think it means?’

  David nodded. ‘There were four sets of tyre marks. They all seem to be from the same vehicle. Whoever was driving must have hit Jo, reversed and then had another go just to make sure.’

  She felt suddenly light-headed. ‘What are the police doing about it?’

  ‘Nothing. Sal’s spoken to traffic. Zero visibility, no witnesses, and nothing but a few muddy tyre tracks. Unless Jo can give them a description when she comes round, Sal doesn’t think they’ll be able to do anything.’

  They sat in silence for several minutes. They both knew what they were thinking, but neither of them dared say it: If she comes round.

  ‘There’s someone out there trying to kill people, David. They killed Jim Hart. And they’ve tried to kill me and Jo. And then there was poor Jenny.’

  ‘What happened to Jenny has shaken all of us, but everything points to her taking her own life.’

  ‘I know that’s what the police think, but after everything that’s happened how can you be so sure?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Oh, come on, David. We’ve had threats about the Woe Waters daubed all over our site huts, one person’s dead – two if you include Jim – and Jo is in there fighting for her life. We’re way past a bit of bad luck here.’

  ‘Please don’t tell me you think there’s something in this “curse of the Woe Waters” nonsense.’

  ‘No, of course I don’t. At least not in the way you mean. But there’s obviously someone out there who does believe in it or at least wants everyone else to. And they’re prepared to do whatever it takes to stop us finding out what really happened in Hungerbourne the first time round.’

  ‘The police believe Jim’s killer is dead. Sal told me she’d interviewed a witness who saw Gerald burn Jim’s body on the pyre.’

  ‘Jesus, David, Sally Treen isn’t the fount of all bloody wisdom.’

  He looked shocked, hurt even, but he said nothing.

  She lowered her voice. ‘I’m sorry. But don’t you see? That doesn’t prove Gerald killed Jim, just that he helped get rid of the body.’ She jabbed a finger towards his phone. ‘Besides which, Gerald didn’t put Jo in a hospital bed.’

  ‘That doesn’t change the fact that unless Jo can give them something to go on, the police won’t be able to take it any further.’

  ‘But they have to!’

  David shook his head. ‘It’s not going to happen, Clare.’

  ‘We can’t just leave it like this.’

  He looked straight at her. ‘And we won’t.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The Pines was a name singularly unsuited to a sprawling Victorian villa on the outskirts of Marlborough where the last stretch of coniferous forest had disappeared centuries before.

  David could see that someone had gone to considerable expense to disguise the true nature of the place. The entrance hall looked more like a well-appointed country club than a care home. And the besuited manager guided David and Clare into a tastefully decorated lounge with the effortless grace of a well-polished maître d’.

  The entire establishment seemed to be in denial. But David had spent too long watching his own father’s decline in an identical institution to be blind to the realities of its daily business. And he couldn’t help wondering what it must be like to come through those outsized doors knowing that the only way you would be leaving was feet first.

  It must have been worse for his father – a medical man who would have been only too well aware of what lay ahead. Until recently, he’d never actually voiced his opinions to David on his son’s very different career choice. But whether it was no longer having his wife around to temper his natural inclinations or as a consequence of his worsening dementia, any inhibitions he had on that front had vanished. David had become used to being greeted by a barrage of verbal abuse on his visits to the care home, as his father detailed his manifold deficiencies. He recalled with particular clarity the afternoon when his father had informed him that he’d wasted his life ‘scrabbling around in dead men’s shit’.

  But he would happily have borne any number of such tirades rather than suffer the alternative. More often than not of late when he’d visited, he’d had to introduce himself to his own father and witness the confusion and fear that followed. As a consequence, his trips back to Derbyshire had become less and less frequent, until he’d reached the point when he’d considered stopping them altogether.

  And now as he shuffled about on the leather Chesterfield, he felt decidedly uncomfortable. If he could have walked away there and then he would have. But that wasn’t an option. It was time for him to start facing up to his responsibilities. He was the one who’d invited Jo down here and involved her in all this. After the incident on the photo tower and reading that article Jo had dug out for him on the Woe Waters, he’d known there was more to it than a few rotten planks and a bunch of kids with a spray can. He should have been more careful.

  If he hadn’t abandoned Jo up on-site, she wouldn’t be lying in a hospital bed right now. He had no idea what they’d managed to get themselves tangled up in, but he was determined to put a stop to it.

  His self-recrimination was summarily halted
as the manager returned, pushing a wheelchair. Its occupant was instantly recognisable as the tall, slim woman from the Brew Crew photograph. Estelle Hart was immaculately dressed in a three-quarter-length taupe skirt and cream blouse with a single string of pearls hanging from her neck.

  Peter had given him the impression that his mother was at death’s door. And as a consequence, David had done everything in his power to postpone this moment for as long as possible. But Estelle Hart looked remarkably hale and hearty for a wheelchair-bound eighty-something. If he hadn’t known, he’d have thought she was ten years younger.

  Could he have misinterpreted what Peter had said? He dredged his memory banks, trying to recall exactly what Peter had said. After their conversation, David had made it abundantly clear to Clare that neither she nor anyone else from the project should go anywhere near Estelle. And despite everything that had happened since, to his surprise she’d done exactly what he’d asked.

  Clare looked just as perplexed as he was. Had his insistence that they mustn’t involve Estelle put Jo in hospital or, worse still, cost Jenny her life? He pushed the thought from his mind. There was no point dwelling on it. Margaret was right: self-recrimination wasn’t going to help anyone. They were here now and Estelle was their best chance of sifting fact from fiction when it came to the events surrounding the first Hungerbourne excavations.

  ‘I’ll get someone to bring you some tea.’ The manager straightened the green and brown scarf draped elegantly over Estelle’s shoulders. ‘Now make sure you don’t overdo it, Estelle.’

  She dismissed him with a flick of her wrist. ‘Honestly, Charles, don’t fuss! You’re as bad as Peter.’

  David waited until Charles had closed the door behind him, leaving the three of them alone, before he spoke. ‘Thank you for agreeing to see us, Mrs Hart.’

  She smiled. ‘When you rang, you told Charles you were friends of Peter. But I didn’t quite understand why you wanted to see me.’

  He hesitated and Clare gestured for him to get on with it. He’d rehearsed umpteen different opening gambits in the car on the way over here. He’d finally settled for a preamble about continuing Gerald’s work at the barrow cemetery.

  But as he looked into Estelle Hart’s sharp blue eyes he could see that flannelling her was never going to work. ‘A friend of ours – Dr Josephine Granski – is lying in a hospital bed because somebody tried to kill her.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear about your friend, Dr Barbrook, I really am, but I don’t see what it has to do with me.’

  David said, ‘We think the attempt on Jo’s life is connected in some way to your husband’s death and the disappearance of a Bronze Age sun disc that came from the Hungerbourne barrow cemetery.’

  Clare cut in. ‘And possibly to the death of another young woman on our dig team too.’

  He cast an admonishing glance at Clare. ‘We can’t be certain about Jenny – the police think it was suicide. But the fact is, Mrs Hart, Jo is in hospital and if it hadn’t been for Ed Jevons’ quick thinking, Clare here might have been killed too. So we’re hoping you might be able to shed some light on what this is all about before anyone else gets hurt.’

  Estelle said, ‘Of course I’ll help in any way I can, but I’m really not sure what I can tell you that would be of any use.’

  He said, ‘To be honest, we don’t know either, Mrs Hart. But somebody seems prepared to go to any lengths to prevent us from digging into Hungerbourne’s past and you’re our best hope of finding out why. Anything you can tell us about what happened at the time of Gerald’s excavation may help.’

  Estelle turned to Clare and smiled. ‘Peter told me about your accident, my dear. I know he was worried about you, but he didn’t mention the unfortunate young woman who took her own life or your friend Dr Gretski.’

  ‘Granski,’ David corrected gently.

  Estelle ignored him, her attention focused firmly on Clare. ‘Tell me what happened to your friend.’

  ‘She was the victim of a hit and run.’

  ‘And you think it was deliberate?’

  David cut in before Clare could reply. ‘We know it was. The driver ploughed into her, reversed and then had another go to make sure they finished the job.’

  Estelle put her hand to her mouth. ‘But why would anyone want to kill her?’

  Clare fixed David with a glare. ‘They didn’t.’

  Estelle said, ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘They were trying to kill me.’

  David turned to Clare. ‘What?’

  ‘There’s no way anyone could have known it was Jo on that road. The only people who had any idea she was up on-site were you, me and Margaret. When they found her, Jo was wearing my waterproof with the hood pulled right up. Whoever was behind the wheel thought it was me.’

  His heart was pounding. Was it possible? Had there really been two attempts on Clare’s life? He nodded. ‘It makes sense.’

  Estelle looked from David to Clare. ‘It doesn’t to me, I’m afraid.’

  Clare said, ‘Peter told you about the missing goldwork.’ Estelle nodded, but didn’t say a word. ‘I’ve been trying to find out what happened to it. So far I’ve managed to establish that it was the Jevons sun disc that was stolen and then replaced with the one from Gerald’s excavation. Whoever did it must have had access to both the excavation archives and the British Museum collections. And there’s only one person who fits the bill.’

  ‘You’re not seriously suggesting Gerald stole it, are you? Archaeology was his life; he would never have done such a thing.’

  ‘I know, and I didn’t understand that either until I realised he must have been covering for someone.’

  ‘That someone being your husband, Mrs Hart,’ David said.

  He searched Estelle’s face for a reaction, but none was discernible.

  Clare said, ‘As far as the police were concerned, when your husband’s remains were found in the attic of the manor that meant Gerald was a murderer. But it didn’t explain what had happened to the sun disc, or why Gerald paid to have the archive moved into the manor and then set fire to the building it had come from.’

  Estelle said, ‘Now that really is absurd. Gerald would never have done that.’

  Clare said, ‘He paid over the odds for a removals company from outside of the area to move it from the coach house to the attic in the manor, no questions asked.’

  ‘That’s insane. Why on earth would he set fire to his own property?’

  Clare said, ‘That’s something we were hoping you might be able to tell us.’

  Estelle said nothing, instead staring determinedly down at her hands, clasped tightly together in her lap.

  Clare said, ‘If you don’t believe me, you can ask Peter. He was the one who found the copies of Gerald’s bank statements that proved it.’

  Estelle looked up, the colour drained from her face. ‘Leave Peter out of this! He has nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Then tell us who has, Mrs Hart.’ David leant forward in his seat and lowered his voice. ‘The police think they’ve got everything worked out. They’re convinced that Gerald killed Jim. But Clare has been telling me right from the start that there’s something not quite right about it. I didn’t believe her at first, but after what’s happened in the last few weeks, I’m beginning to think she’s right – that somebody else was involved.’

  Estelle remained tight-lipped.

  Clare said, ‘We know Gerald cremated Jim’s body. We even know where, when and how. But what we don’t know, and what I can’t understand, is why Jim’s own wife didn’t realise something was wrong at the time.’

  For the first time since they’d arrived, Estelle looked flustered. ‘I thought he’d run off with another woman.’

  Clare said, ‘Joyce Clifford.’

  Estelle nodded.

  David hadn’t wanted to make this more difficult than it had to be but, despite her advancing years, Estelle Hart was clearly a woman who knew her own mind. ‘That was very con
venient, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Being abandoned by one’s husband for another man’s wife is not my idea of convenience, Dr Barbrook.’

  ‘You weren’t on the best of terms with Jim before his death, were you? Peter has told me more than once how much he detested his father and why.’

  Estelle maintained her silence, refusing to be goaded.

  He could feel the colour rising in his cheeks as he spoke. He cleared his throat. ‘There’s something about the Joyce Clifford affair that doesn’t ring true to me. When a man leaves a woman, he doesn’t just walk out and leave all of his possessions behind. He takes them with him. And from everything I’ve learnt of your husband, he was a man who liked his luxuries: good suits, expensive cologne, fast cars. It seems to me he would have taken anything he could lay his hands on.’

  Estelle was visibly rattled. ‘I don’t know what good you think picking over old sores like this is doing your friend, Dr Barbrook.’

  ‘You were Jim’s wife. You must have noticed that he took nothing with him.’ David glanced at Clare. She looked impressed. ‘Gerald was no fool. He would have known that after he died someone was bound to examine the archive and work out who was in that cremation urn and very probably how they died. And yet he seems to have been perfectly content for everyone to know he killed his own brother.

  ‘Everyone tells me how much he cared for you and Peter. But if that were true, why was he willing to let you endure all of the innuendo and stories in the press about the family that he must have known would follow the discovery of Jim’s remains? Why would anyone subject their own flesh and blood to that? I keep asking myself: what could possibly be worse? I can’t work it out, not after he’d gone to so much trouble. Even paying off Joyce Clifford to make sure she stayed away – to ensure that you and Peter remained secure and untroubled.’

  Estelle gestured towards a jug of water and a glass sitting on a small side table. David filled the glass and handed it to her. She took two small sips before passing it back to him. ‘Gerald was a gentle man – so unlike Jim. But he believed in loyalty. He would have gone to any lengths to protect the people he cared for.’