Beyond the Bone Read online

  Arriving at Whitethorn to examine the new charge which fate had placed on his account, he had critically examined the podgy thirteen-year-old who stood before him, then asked the headmistress, ‘Is she finished yet?’

  ‘Finished?’ replied Miss Akenside. ‘She cannot yet be said properly to have begun.’

  Thereafter Pasquino treated the school as a kind of oven into which he peered from time to time to see if Zeugma were done. It was a slow process and spotted with moments of despair. At thirteen, half of her coevals were as fat as she was. Two years later, the proportions were significantly changed, and at the age of seventeen Zeugma was convinced she was the fattest girl in the world. Even her friends called her Humpty, a habit Pasquino had picked up (and still, distressingly, retained).

  At eighteen Pasquino had decided that she was as done as she was ever likely to get at Whitethorn and offered her a straight choice. University for three years to carry her through to the age of majority and self-government (still twenty-one in 1968), or she could join him as a kind of baggage-master-labourer-amanuensis.

  She thought for only a minute and chose. The bits of holiday she had spent with Pasquino had given her a genuine interest in archaeology, but it wasn’t just this that swayed her. She had had enough of being educated, and the company of her slim fellow pupils was beginning to pall. The thought of three years as a fat undergraduate was vile.

  Thus began five years of travel, trial and tribulation, hard work and constant learning. Pasquino was an archaeological gadfly, dismissed as flighty and unsound by some of the more conservative elements in the business, but with a disconcerting habit of turning visible theory into incontrovertible fact. His siting of the Roman lighthouse at Deal had proved accurate within ten metres (their fault, not mine, he said); his interpretations of Linear A, though not generally accepted, caused great scholarly interest; and his theory that American Indians may have discovered Norway shot him into the ken of the general public. He was not invariably right, but often enough, and the newspapers loved him. He had fought in Korea where he lost an eye through his discovery of what he thought might be a Macedonian sherd when digging a slit trench and his subsequent slowness to take cover when the shells started falling.

  Zeugma had soon begun to realize that a great deal of hard work and careful investigation usually preceded a Pasquino intuitive flash. There was always a starting point, more often than not the acceptably scholarly one of a learned article reporting a bit of recent field work. But sometimes a snippet of folklore, a local tradition or, as in the present case, an accidental glimpse of some aerial photographs was enough to set him off.

  And once he was off, there was no knowing where he would stop.

  At present it was where he had stopped the previous night that was bothering Zeugma. Not that she was concerned about his well-being – such erratic behaviour fell well within his concept of the permissible – but she was concerned about his reaction to her own activities. She hadn’t really set out to make a fuss about the bones; it had been an accumulative thing, provoked by the amusement or disbelief of those she had mentioned the loss to. Not to be taken seriously was a cross she had long ago decided to drop by the roadside, but it required almost as much effort to do this as to lug it to the top of the hill. Normally Pasquino would applaud her efforts, but not if they drew unwanted attention to his current activities. Zeugma was uneasily aware of the interesting little newspaper story this would make.

  She ran through a mental check-list. The police would be discreet, avoiding like the plague anything which might bring her into their midst once more. Old Charley at Blackrigg and his customers would no more think of contacting the local press than they would of revealing their incomes to the Inland Revenue.

  Which left only one. The polluter, the dark, satanic mills man. Lakenheath. Even the name rang sinisterly.

  He had been considerably provoked, she had to admit. If he wanted to take his revenge by making her look foolish in that little comic-cuts section at the foot of page one in the Guardian, it would be understandable.

  She was still a long way from the guilt feeling she knew she would eventually reach, but this new motive of self-interest weighed strong.

  Lakenheath would have to be placated. And quickly.

  Two minutes later she descended the stairs from the N.E.C.D.C. office, having extracted from a grudging Miss Peat the information that her employer was out, which she knew, and would return, which she guessed. She decided to go to the police station and soothe the frayed nerves there.

  As she left the building, a large black Buick slid silently into the two English parking spots next to the Range Rover.

  Out of it stepped a dark-suited man, his hair trimmed unfashionably short, like an astronaut’s. He was young, but there was a stillness about him which made you forget his youth. He stood by the car and watched Zeugma cross the street. His face had that menacing blankness with which the film-makers have so ingeniously overcome the language problem in spaghetti westerns.

  Zeugma felt challenged. It was a psychological hazard with her. She filled the known world with imagined challenges to her right to exist. And she answered as many of them as she could.

  Now she stood by the Range Rover and returned the stranger’s stare. He it was that moved first and disappeared through the door which led to Lakenheath’s office.

  But as Zeugma drove away she felt far from victorious.

  4

  Many of these Urnes were broke by a vulgar discoverer in hope of enclosed treasure … Where profit hath prompted, no age hath wanted such miners.

  Lakenheath discovered Miss Amis looking very bored in the chintzy lounge of the Abbey Hotel. Things started well and she agreed without demur when he proposed a short drive.

  It was very short indeed. After less than a minute he pulled off the road beside the ruins of Lanercost Priory after which the hotel was mis-named.

  ‘Have you seen the priory?’ he asked.

  ‘No’, she said.

  He took this to mean that she had not walked round the remains, though it might well mean she just had not noticed their existence.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘It’s very interesting.’

  They walked beneath the ruined arch and past the gatehouse in which Edward the First had been received by the monks, information which Miss Amis received with considerable indifference. Undaunted, he put his arm round her waist and suggested they rested on the parapet of the cloister wall to drink in atmosphere. She twisted expertly out of his grip and replied that she felt gin would do her more good.

  Personally trained by Bulstrode, thought Lakenheath gloomily as she strolled away from him. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his sheepskin jacket and returned her gaze sourly as she turned to see if he was following her.

  Then her glance moved upwards, her eyes and mouth rounded to circles, like a facial pawnbroker’s sign, and she said, ‘Oh!’

  As a warning it was little enough, but it made Lakenheath glance upwards in time to see the large block of sandstone tumbling lazily down on him. He jumped to one side, slipped on the damp grass and fell awkwardly, twisting his ankle beneath him. The stone struck the ground less than a yard away, showering him with lumps of earth.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Miss Amis.

  He didn’t answer but rose slowly, wincing as he put his weight on his injured ankle. It wasn’t badly hurt, merely slightly twisted, but the pain was enough to put him in mind of the effects of receiving half a hundredweight of twelfth-century sandstone on his head.

  It wasn’t his lucky season, he decided ruefully. There had been other incidents recently. He’d had a blow-out in the Morris the previous week and a few days before that he’d almost been knocked down by a motor-bike. And there seemed little chance of a compensatory improvement to his sexual fortunes.

  Satisfied he was able to move, Miss Amis had resumed her progress towards the car. Glumly he brushed down his jacket and followed.

  There
was another vehicle parked next to his now, a Range Rover. He looked round suspiciously. There, sure enough, standing over by the farm which adjoined the priory ruins was the fat girl. She must have seen, and doubtless enjoyed, his discomfiture. Now she was walking towards him. Quickly he got into the Morris, started the engine and drove away from the priory. In the mirror he saw the Range Rover start up too. Miss Amis seemed to have gone to sleep in the passenger seat.

  No wonder men became monks.

  Zeugma kept her distance behind the Morris. It had been mere coincidence that she had come across Lakenheath at the ruins. It seemed an unlikely place to find him, though the presence of that spindly secretarial camp-follower indicated his real motives. Her opinion of the man had been confirmed by her recent discussion with Sergeant Fell, who had become almost garrulous when he realized she had come to close the matter of the bones. Lakenheath, he had replied to her queries, was a good man to pacify. He seemed to like stirring up trouble as in the matter of the hippies in the old research centre. Zeugma would have got the full blow-by-blow story if she had cared to press, but foreseeing that her own feelings about the centre plus her views on the rights of minorities would displease Fell even more than the fascist extremism of the N.E.C.D.C. line, she had left while all was still sweetness and light.

  She had come to the priory ruins to meditate, had spotted Lakenheath, decided this was not a good time to approach him with feelings of such bitter dislike in her heart, then, as though in response to some angry impulse of her own, the stone had fallen. She had opened her mouth to cry out, but not been able to.

  Now she followed, her anger against the man dulled by a stronger sense of unease at what she had just witnessed. Or perhaps ‘witnessed’ was too strong.

  But it had seemed for a moment as the stone fell that a shadow had moved behind the parapet from which it had been dislodged. And though her further examination had produced no evidence that anyone else was in the ruins at that time, her sense of a presence was too strong for her to wish to remain any longer after Lakenheath’s departure.

  She arrived back in Brampton just in time to see Lakenheath limping through the door of the building which housed his office. He must have shoved the girl out at the hotel almost without stopping, she thought, as she parked the Range Rover and prepared to get her own distasteful task of conciliation over.

  Though Zeugma took her time in crossing the road, Lakenheath’s even slower progress had just got him to the top of the stairs. He turned, attracted by the sound of the opening door, shuddered at the sight of her and shouted with more anger than the occasion seemed to demand, ‘What the hell do you want?’

  ‘Just a word,’ she said, starting to ascend. She affected nonchalance, but to climb those steep narrow stairs to the angry man who stood half in shadow at the top required a positive act of will. For a moment she thought he was just going to stand there blocking her way but then he shook his head and said in a voice more pleading than wrathful, ‘Look, I haven’t got your sodding bones.’

  He turned and went into his office before she could reply. She followed him. Miss Peat looked up from her typewriter and opened her mouth as if to speak, but even Lakenheath’s limp did not slow him down sufficiently for the words to emerge before he reached his own office door.

  He pushed it open and stopped abruptly. Zeugma almost ran into him, and round his shoulders she saw what had caused the halt. Sitting behind Lakenheath’s desk was the man from the Buick.

  ‘Hello,’ said Lakenheath neutrally. ‘Who’re you?’

  He was irritated, Zeugma sensed, but not so irritated that he would run the risk of offending someone who might be important. No, he would vent his irritation on troublesome females of whose unimportance he was quite convinced. I come in peace, Zeugma reminded herself anxiously. I mustn’t let him provoke me.

  The Buick man slowly rose, walked round the desk with the measured tread of a cat minding its own business, and held out his hand.

  ‘Mr Lakenheath?’ he said in a flat American accent. ‘I’m Mervyn Diss.’

  Lakenheath took the hand in a gesture which from behind looked more reflex than welcoming.

  ‘Diss?’ he repeated.

  ‘That’s right. Diss. Charnell Bearings.’

  His gaze slipped round Lakenheath and fastened upon Zeugma. At this range it was even harder to bear than it had been in the street and she stepped back half a pace.

  Lakenheath turned now and looked at her as if he had never seen her before in his life.

  ‘Mr Lakenheath,’ said Zeugma in her best headmistress-creep voice, ‘I wanted to say how sorry …’

  ‘Please,’ said Lakenheath very gently. ‘Not now.’

  He looked back at Diss as if suspecting that he might have been an apparition, vanishing as suddenly as he had appeared.

  ‘Yes, well, I just hope that …’ Zeugma began again.

  ‘For Christ’s sake! I said not now! Can’t you see I’m busy? Just push off, will you?’

  This was more like it. This was the authentic male chauvinist polluter in full cry. Zeugma forgot her vows of humility.

  ‘Yes, I can see you’re busy!’ she said. ‘Busy planning to tear up a bit more of the countryside in the name of progress. But you try it, just you go and try it and I’ll, I’ll

  Zeugma, shaking with rage, found herself like King Lear unable to complete her threat though knowing it would be the terror of the earth. Also she found herself being expertly shepherded out of the door on to the landing. Like a good sheepdog, Lakenheath never actually touched his stray ewe, but kept her moving by a series of short economical feints. She decided to make a last stand at the top of the stairs, but a slight though infinitely menacing movement of his head caused her to step back once more. Her foot found nothing to step on to and she realized she had reached the stairs themselves when Lakenheath’s expression changed from purposeful wrath to wrathful anxiety. He grabbed at her, she grabbed at him; for a moment a stasis seemed to have been achieved; then together they collapsed sideways against the wall and slid slowly down the first half-dozen stairs.

  Zeugma was the first to recover. She was relieved to find she was unharmed except for a couple of bruises and she looked down at the still recumbent Lakenheath, uncertain whether to thank him or kick him.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. He looked rather pale himself and she decided that perhaps she had better not be too hard on him.

  ‘Yes thanks,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I underestimated your weight.’

  That did it. She swung back her foot, aiming at a point just above the ankle which memories of Whitethorn hockey field assured her was particularly vulnerable. Then she became aware of witnesses. Above, Diss watched impassively, while below a new figure, a middle-aged rather short man, gazed in amazement at the violent tableau.

  ‘Here,’ he called. ‘What’s going on? Stop that, Lakenheath!’

  The short man ascended. Zeugma looked at him approvingly. Clearly he was ready to believe that the scene was all organized by Lakenheath for some perverse pleasure. Such things, her well-travelled friends at Whitethorn had assured her, were commonplace in Hamburg, Port Said and South Kensington.

  ‘Oh, hello, Mr Sayer,’ said Lakenheath, trying to rise.

  ‘Ohh!’ he groaned and subsided.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ said Sayer suspiciously.

  ‘My ankle. I turned it earlier and now it’s really gone.’

  Zeugma bent down and pulled back his sock. The ankle was swelling almost visibly, as though glad to be free of the restricting wool. It was, she realized, the very ankle into which she had been about to bury the reinforced toe-cap of her walking boot.

  They helped him stumblingly to the top of the stairs, where Diss reached forward and, with an ease which mocked their efforts, picked Lakenheath bodily from their hands and set him down in the office.

  ‘Chair,’ he said to Miss Peat, who, to everyone’s amazement, moved at great spe
ed to set one behind Lakenheath, who sank into it gratefully.

  During the next few minutes, Zeugma was surprised to notice she herself was the only one who displayed any kind of solicitude about the injured ankle, including Lakenheath himself. The man Diss introduced himself to Sayer, who seemed very impressed and proportionately apologetic about the embarrassment of the scene which had just taken place. Lakenheath kept on trying to join the conversation, verbally and physically, but every time he tried to stand up with a view to hopping towards the other two, Zeugma, who was removing his shoe, jabbed her forefinger into the swelling and he subsided with a groan.

  Miss Peat just sat, hands poised over her keyboard.

  ‘I was hoping to do a site tour first thing tomorrow morning,’ Diss was saying. ‘To ensure we are not wasting our time.’

  ‘You won’t be, you won’t be,’ said Sayer, shaking his head emphatically. ‘Mr Lakenheath, our chief officer …’

  He turned and looked at Mr Lakenheath, his chief officer, observed with horror the size of the swelling, and continued with some irritation, ‘Mr Lakenheath clearly won’t be able to take you, so …’

  ‘Yes, I will. Yes, I will,’ protested Lakenheath, surprising Zeugma, who had not read him as the show-must-go-on-type. ‘Of course I will. Just hold on a mo.’

  They watched in silence as he vainly attempted to replace his sock, which Zeugma was interested to note had a large darn in the toe. It was no contest.

  ‘… so I shall take you myself,’ continued Sayer. ‘Have you come straight here? Yes. Then Miss Peat will book you a room at the Abbey Hotel. It’s en route, so I’ll call for you at nine, shall I ? Miss Peat, get on to the Abbey, will you?’

  Diss walked past Zeugma and Lakenheath without a glance in their direction. Sayer was close behind, as though fearful of losing contact.

  ‘I’m all right,’ insisted Lakenheath as he passed. ‘I could take him.’