Beyond the Bone Page 2

  He began to rise, then became aware that the plump girl was standing beside him.

  ‘What’s that you’re saying?’ she demanded. ‘Knock down this village? Route networks? Factory sites? What the blazes is going on?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake !’ said Lakenheath. ‘Go and play somewhere else, there’s a love. And do stop eavesdropping on adult conversations.’

  ‘I’ll eavesdrop as much as I like when I get a whiff of monstrous conspiracies like this !’ she retorted. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I don’t see how it’s your business,’ said Lakenheath, ‘but I’m the chief officer of the North East Cumberland Development Council.’

  ‘So that’s it ! Who’d have believed it? The dark satanic mills are trying to get their teeth in even up here. Wait till I tell Leo !’

  She was flushed with anger once more. She really did turn an extraordinary colour when she was in a rage, thought Lakenheath. Like a Red Delicious apple.

  ‘My job is to build up this part of the country,’ he said coldly.

  ‘Build up !’ she interjected. ‘By knocking down places where people have lived for centuries !’

  She gestured dramatically at the street outside the window.

  ‘Something needs to be done if people are going to go on living here for centuries,’ Lakenheath answered ‘God, I bet most of these houses were built out of wagon loads of stones hacked from poor old Hadrian’s wall ! And Johnnie Wade was happy enough to use half the wall as foundations for his lovely road. None of your sentimental preservationists then ! ’

  ‘What do you know about it, you pompous …’

  She seemed stuck for a word extreme enough to capture his demerits, or perhaps she knew the word but was educationally inhibited from using it. Oily Bulstrode decided it was time to pour himself on troubled waters.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I think I started this. I was just expressing my admiration for this charming village.’

  He addressed himself to Lakenheath.

  ‘You misunderstood me, I fear. My interest was a purely personal one. I was just going to ask you if much property came on the market up here? What a charming holiday home two or three of these cottages would make if they were run into one another. Outside would remain quite unchanged, which would please our young friend here, but what the eye doesn’t see …’

  He chuckled benevolently, feeling he had done his job well.

  The girl was staring at him incredulously. She had passed the Red Delicious stage, Lakenheath noted, and was not far short of the Red Cabbage.

  ‘You’re as bad as he is !’ she finally exploded. ‘Worse ! You want to come creeping in unannounced. At least you can lie down in front of a bulldozer, but you can’t lie in front of dry rot ! But you won’t get away with it, either of you. Forewarned is forearmed !’

  She stormed angrily out of the bar and a moment later the Range Rover’s engine revved indignantly.

  Lakenheath hoped she was going back up the moorland track to continue whatever odd activity had taken her there in the first place. In her present mood she would be lethal on the open road.

  Bulstrode, showing his true Poly-fibre quality, was quite unperturbed by the outburst. He had not ceased kneading Miss Amis’s leg under the table and now he pushed his empty glass significantly towards Lakenheath.

  ‘Well,’ he said with a smile, ‘at least we’ve taken her mind off her lost friend.’

  This was true. But fifteen minutes later when Zeugma reached the site of her dig to tidy up and collect the implements her concern for Pasquino had made her leave strewn around, yet another loss had relegated Bulstrode and Lakenheath in their turn.

  Incredulously she peered into the trench and wondered where on earth, or anywhere, an eighteen-hundred-year-old skeleton could have gone?

  3

  Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are slippery or fall like snow upon us which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity.

  ‘How long have you been on this job, Mr Lakenheath?’

  ‘Six months, I think, Mr Sayer,’ he answered, wondering if he should alter his Napoleonic pose by the wall map in his dusty little office. His interlocutor was sitting behind the large, old-fashioned desk whose top was impressively free of clutter. Lakenheath believed in a clutter-free desk. The minute Miss Peat in the outer office announced a visitor, he swept everything on the surface into a cardboard box which he then placed on top of the filing cabinet.

  ‘So it was last September we appointed you.’

  Lakenheath nodded and peered out of the window with an air of unconcern, looking down into the bustling little thoroughfare which was Front Street, Brampton. His office was at the top of a three-storied building and he had a good view of the little town. Friends had laughed when he had told them he would be centred on Brampton. One exiled native of the nearby metropolis of Carlisle had warned him, they play tiggy with hammers there. But Lakenheath liked it, liked the town, liked the people.

  And his friend had been wrong. This sod at his desk wasn’t using a hammer. He was using a pickaxe.

  ‘September,’ continued Sayer. ‘Autumn. Middle of the financial year. No business would think of moving in autumn, you said. Then came the winter. You did some research on that, I recall. It’s cold in winter, wasn’t that what you found out? And now its spring. Things grow in spring, don’t they? Or haven’t you started your research yet?’

  Sayer was a small man, but it was clear that inside that diminutive frame a very large and potentially destructive rage was trying to get out. N.E.C.D.C. was a project very dear to him for all kinds of reasons, but mainly because he had fallen out with the much larger and more streamlined Cumberland Industrial Development Council over some detail of policy. N.E.C.D.C. was his attempt to cock a snook at the official body, and a very expensive snook it must be, thought Lakenheath guiltily.

  Sayer moved to the wall map now and peered at it.

  ‘What are these flags?’

  ‘Red ones show our sites. Blue ones indicate potential customers.’

  ‘Do they now? Let’s see.’

  He pulled one out and examined the lettering on it.

  ‘Smithson Cans. They’re out. Cherrilax. They’re out. Hortifrolic? Who the hell are Hortifrolic?’

  ‘They make garden gnomes. They’re out.’

  Another flag joined the growing pile on the floor.

  ‘Which leaves two. Poly-fibre. That’s that fellow Bulstrode, isn’t it? Is he still around?’

  ‘I think he’ll be out at the golf club this morning. Checking on local amenities,’ Lakenheath answered smartly.

  The pin crumpled in Sayer’s grip and the flag fluttered to the floor with the rest.

  ‘Which leaves one. Charnell Bearings. What do they do?’

  ‘If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say, make bearings.’

  Sayer shot him a basilisk glance.

  ‘Better than gnomes, I suppose. Let’s have a look.’

  ‘At what?’

  ‘At what correspondence you’ve had with them, that’s what. You have had correspondence with them?’

  Lakenheath stepped smartly to the door, opened it and called, ‘Miss Peat.’

  After a full minute his secretary, who had to travel at least three yards, appeared. Lakenheath gazed at her in distaste. Poly-fibre gave you a Miss Amis, but the best North East Cumberland Development Council could run to was this. As her name suggested, she was brown and fibrous and capable of generating great heat.

  ‘The Charnell Bearings file, Miss Peat,’ commanded Lakenheath, crossing his fingers in his trouser pocket and hoping it wasn’t in the cardboard box on top of the cabinet.

  It wasn’t. It occupied a drawer to itself in the filing cabinet and even Miss Peat’s laboured movements could not make it look heavy.

  Sayer opened the file and made a great show of examining its interior.

  ‘Is this all?’ he growled, drawing out a single sheet of paper.

  �
��Yes.’

  ‘Dear Mr Lakenheath,’ Sayer read out loud. ‘Many thanks for your literature which has roused a great deal of interest in our company. My congratulations to you on a very nicely organized and packaged presentation. If my directors share my enthusiasm, and I am sure they will, I hope to take advantage of your offer of an examination of potential sites. Of particular interest to us would be the former Research Centre on Thirlsike Waste but the whole area would be under consideration.

  Looking forward to an early meeting, yours sincerely, Mervyn Diss.’

  ‘You’ve not replied?’ demanded Sayer, shaking the empty file.

  ‘I wrote personally. It seemed a useful contact, worth buttering up.’

  ‘Did you? I suppose you smooth sods know how to treat your own. Well, Mr Lakenheath, it’s precious little to show for six months’ work, is it?’

  ‘Things will liven up,’ protested Lakenheath. ‘The new presentation with the aerial photographs should rouse a lot of interest.’

  ‘More damned expense ! The only blasted interest you’ve roused so far was that gang of hippies who broke into the centre. Thank God we’re shot of them. You can’t take people round with scum like that cluttering up the place.’

  ‘There were only four,’ said Lakenheath.

  ‘They’re like the blacks,’ said Sayer. ‘Once they show up, they’ll fill the place unless you act quick and get ’em out. Well, I shifted ’em, and I’ll shift you too, my lad, if we don’t get results soon !’

  He made for the door, stopped and turned, almost catching Lakenheath’s derisive gesture.

  ‘And another thing. We’re not an alcoholics’ charity ! Get that fellow Bulstrode off our slate before he drinks the county bankrupt !’

  Now Sayer left, his efforts to slam the door thwarted by a warped frame. Lakenheath sat down at his desk and pondered. Sayer was an eminently dislikable man, but he had justice on his side. Payment by results would have left Lakenheath penniless, there was no denying it.

  Instead of which, he thought solemnly, I am … penniless !

  He whistled a dirge-like melody and crossed his legs on the desk. After a while he stopped whistling.

  It was in this pose that Sergeant Fell found him.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said loudly.

  Lakenheath woke and felt disconcerted by the man’s presence. His relationship with the local police had not been untouched by discord and he had recently addressed himself to them in terms the recollection of which made him uneasy every time he parked his car.

  ‘Good morning, Sergeant,’ he said brightly. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I’m not sure, sir.’ Fell looked at him assessingly. A big red-haired man with a bushy moustache, he had been very patient with Lakenheath, but the most placid mind can burn with resentment. However, now he looked worried rather than vengeful.

  ‘Miss,’ he said, ‘is this the man?’

  Lakenheath became aware of someone else in the room, or rather half in it. On the threshold with a look of sheepish obstinacy on her face was the fat girl who had attempted to run him over the previous day.

  ‘Yes. That’s him,’ she said grimly.

  Lakenheath swung his legs to the floor and sat upright in his chair.

  Oh God ! he thought incredulously. She’s saying I’ve assaulted her !

  ‘Sergeant,’ he said. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  Now Fell looked distinctly uneasy.

  ‘Nothing really, sir. It’s just that the young lady here, she says that … well, were you up on the common past Blackrigg yesterday, sir?’

  ‘Yes, I was. What’s this all about?’

  ‘The thing is this, sir,’ said Fell. ‘The lady was doing what the archaeologists call a dig, and then she got a bit worried about her companion …’

  ‘And she took off to look for him. Yes, yes, I know all that. Almost killing me en route. So?’

  ‘When she returned to the site later, she found something was missing.’

  ‘Missing? Oh, I see !’ Lakenheath laughed, still incredulous but at the same time relieved. ‘And she thinks Mr Bulstrode and I … how ridiculous !’

  He laughed again. The girl began to flush that glowing fruity colour.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Tell me, what is it? What did you lose?’

  The sergeant stepped back a pace as though dissociating himself from the proceedings.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Lakenheath.

  ‘A skeleton,’ snapped the girl.

  ‘A skeleton !’ echoed Lakenheath, and then began to laugh in earnest.

  ‘They were old bones, she says,’ said the sergeant, happy now the worst was over. ‘Roman or something. Anyway, the young lady was at us all last evening about them, and she started again this morning. When we asked if she’d seen anyone else out that way yesterday, she suddenly mentioned you. Not by name, but what you were. For some reason, she seemed to think it was likely you might have picked up these bones, so here we are.’

  As the sergeant spoke, Lakenheath became aware the girl was opening all the drawers in the filing cabinet and the stationery cupboard.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he demanded.

  ‘Look, miss, you’ve got no right …’ began the sergeant.

  ‘What’s in that?’ she interrupted. Her finger indicated the cardboard box on top of the cabinet.

  ‘A body,’ said Lakenheath. ‘But it’s not yours. It belongs to another little fat girl I strangled earlier.’

  She reached up and pushed. The box slid away from her, teetered on the edge for a moment, then toppled, spreading across the floor an ashtray and its contents, copies of The Times, Guardian, Mirror, Sun and Playboy, a pack of cards, a doughnut with a bit out of it and an unopened bottle of Guinness.

  ‘The doughnut may be Roman,’ suggested Lakenheath.

  ‘Oh, grow up !’ snarled the girl, and left, succeeding with the door where Sayer had failed.

  After he had recovered from the bang, the sergeant too prepared to depart.

  ‘Sorry about all this, sir. You can’t help us then? Very sorry, but she was most insistent.’

  ‘I bet,’ said Lakenheath. ‘If you pursued legitimate investigations as thoroughly, you might get somewhere. Just leave the door.’

  He stood and viewed the debris on the floor with distaste. The bottle of Guinness he picked up and locked in his desk. Then he went into the outer office where Miss Peat sat as unmoved by all the recent disturbance as an Easter Island statue by a heavy dewfall.

  ‘I have to go out for a while,’ said Lakenheath. ‘If anyone calls, I’ll be back after lunch. Oh, and tidy up my office a bit, there’s a sweetie.’

  He left, breathing in deeply as he stepped into the thin lemon-coloured spring sunshine, and walked briskly along Front Street to where his car was parked opposite the Conservative Club, one of Sayer’s favourite haunts.

  He had had enough of dwarf tyrants, vegetable secretaries and corpulent archaeologists. There were other things in life. He checked the golden hands of St Martin’s clock in one direction against the white face of the Market House clock in the other and was pleased to see that the sacred and the profane for once agreed. By now Bulstrode should be puffing his way over the range of low fells on which the locals had masochistically sited their golf course. If the fine views over the Tarn did not hold him, there was a sufficiency of heather and gorse to delay his passage.

  And Miss Amis? No one in his right mind would take Miss Amis on to a golf course. Not to play golf. She would doubtless still be at the Abbey Hotel near the village of Lanercost. The way to a businessman’s heart could be through his secretary. Sayer might even count it as work.

  With a last defiant glance toward the Conservative Club, he climbed into the old Morris and set off to earn his daily bread.

  Zeugma, seated in a tiny café on the other side of the street, watched him go with distaste. Smug, smooth, self-centred, he was the blueprint of a hundred elder brothers who had paraded their pathet
ic charms round the school grounds on Open Days, each imagining that a mere feint of his hand towards his flies would send a dozen girls into anticipatory swoons. The only difference was that they at least were young.

  Dismissing him from her mind (though recognizing glumly that once her anger faded, she would begin to feel guilty about that absurd scene in his office) she stirred her drinking chocolate and decided the time had come to ‘look into herself’. The phrase was her old headmistress’s, who advocated a bout of this interesting exercise at least once a day. Zeugma had let things slip during the last few years and sometimes herself went unlooked-into for months on end.

  The school she attended had been Whitethorn in Sussex, where (according to the brochure) girls were prepared for both their traditional and their contemporary role in society. It catered mainly for the daughters of those whose military, political or business duties forced them to live abroad. Zeugma’s father had been a minor but promising diplomat whose death by drowning in the Tigris while stationed in Baghdad had caused little stir. A keen naturalist, he had overreached in his efforts to trap some water-insect – or so went the theory.

  As Zeugma’s mother had vanished untraceably with a Peruvian civil servant during a short posting to Lima a few years previously, the family solicitor contacted the man designated in Arthur Gray’s will as Zeugma’s guardian. This was Leo Pasquino, F.S.A., Ph.D.

  Pasquino was Arthur Gray’s oldest friend. Of distant Italian extraction, he had contrived even at the age of thirty-five to establish himself in the main line of English eccentrics. His eccentricity was partly a pose in order to facilitate extraction from patrons and public of the monies necessary to his many archaeological projects. But pose quickly becomes posture and though feathers may be fluttered and fluffed, they are none the less part of the bird.