‘Sometimes I wish you didn’t know all this,’ Merrily said, and Jane smiled.
Happy … ish. Down on the rug, arms around her knees, watching baby flames scurrying from log to log. She’d be happier still if she knew she’d been checked out by the Special Branch, but perhaps this wasn’t the time to enlighten her.
‘I was over in Coleman’s Meadow this afternoon,’ Jane said.
‘I thought it was all fenced off.’
‘It is, but Coops has a key to the temporary gate.’
Coops?
Jane turned from the fire, picked up Merrily’s look.
‘Neil Cooper – the guy from the County Archaeologist’s department?’
‘Oh.’
‘Actually, he’s pretty pissed off. Been trying to leave for a while – too young, obviously, to be tied to local government. He’d like to be a field archaeologist. But he’s afraid of what will happen at Coleman’s Meadow if he quits now.’
‘In what way?’
It had gone suspiciously quiet since the initial excitement over the discovery of the three long-buried megaliths in Coleman’s Meadow. Jane had been euphoric about the stones, because the field was bisected by what she – and the great visionary Alfred Watkins before her – had considered to be a seminal ley line linking Ledwardine Church with the Iron Age earthworks on the summit of Cole Hill, the village’s holy hill.
Hills again. Always hills.
‘OK,’ Jane said. ‘You know about rescue archaeology, right?’
‘This is where archaeologists are given a specific period of time to excavate an area scheduled for development?’
‘It’s what most archaeology is these days, thanks to the rampant overpopulation that’s suffocating Britain.’ Jane scowled. ‘Time we scrapped all family allowance if you’ve got more than two kids, so it’s like … three kids, no more benefits. Four kids, compulsory sterilization.’
‘That’s your personal concept, is it?’
Jane’s politics could veer from extreme left to extreme right and back again within seconds. Extreme being the only constant.
‘I don’t know. We’ve got to do something, haven’t we? Like I don’t care what colour people are or what they worship, as long as there are less of them.’
‘Fewer,’ Merrily said.
‘You clergy are just so pedantic.’
‘But to return to Coleman’s Meadow …’
‘Yeah, well, obviously it’s our beloved councillor, Lyndon Pierce. Gomer should’ve buried that bastard with the JCB while he had a chance.’
‘Gomer almost wound up in court, as it is.’
‘He wanted to go to court. He told me. He wanted his day in court, so he could stand up and publicly accuse Pierce of corruption and get it into the papers. If you say something in court, you’re like immune from getting sued for slander?’
‘Mmm.’ It was interesting, the way Pierce had declined to give evidence and the police inquiry had been dropped. ‘However—’
‘OK.’ Jane plopping down next to Merrily on the sofa. ‘The situation is that Pierce and some of his fascist friends in the council’s so-called cabinet want it confined to rescue archaeology. Which means Coops is allowed to get the site excavated and learn what he can from it and then they have to give it back. Like, take the stones away or something, and then give back the Meadow? So all that’s left is like maps and stuff in a report?’
‘And the housing estate goes ahead?’
‘Which would be crass, soulless and a total crime. As well as, obviously, destroying the ley.’
‘I’m with you there. What can we do to stop it?’
‘OK, well, there’s a small lobby inside the council, supported by the heritage guys and the tourist guys, suggesting that if the stones were reerected they’d be the best prehistoric remains in the county and a major tourist attraction.’
‘So potentially better for the local economy than an estate of four-bedroomed houses with double garages.’
‘Means we get coachloads of tourists, but still the lesser of two evils.’
‘So what are you proposing to do?’
‘Nothing.’ Jane’s face had gone blank. ‘Coops says it’s best if I do nothing at present. Don’t give Pierce any ammunition.’
‘And you … you’re going along with that?’
‘Coops is a very persuasive guy. In his quiet way.’
Merrily watched Jane selecting a new dry log for the fire, considering the options in the basket: the ash or the oak, fast burn/slow burn.
‘Don’t suppose Eirion called?’
‘Wouldn’t know,’ Jane said, insouciant. ‘Haven’t had the mobile switched on all day.’
The call came just after ten. Jane was watching Law and Order, the one about sex crimes, Merrily’s eyes closing when the mobile chimed on the arm of the sofa.
‘Sophie rang me,’ the Bishop said. Doleful.
‘Two seconds, Bernie.’
Merrily took the mobile into the kitchen, where the cold air was like a razor. The Aga had swallowed two gallons of oil a day, but it had had its compensations.
‘I suppose a grovelling apology’s due,’ the Bishop said. ‘All I can say is that I kept nothing from you. Not intentionally.’
‘That’s reassuring. Kind of.’
‘And I’m still no wiser, Merrily. Although, yes, I am now inclined to believe that the initial information I was given by Adam Eastgate is … probably incomplete.’
‘Incomplete. That’s a very elastic word, Bernie.’
‘Whether any concealment of information is down to the Duchy I would personally doubt. I don’t think Adam’s the sort of man to play a double game. However I, ah … Sophie did say she’d felt obliged to tell you that we’d also had a call from, ah …’
‘A private number in Canterbury?’
‘Yes, well, whoever it was from, I was advised that the best way of dealing with this might be simply to allow my Deliverance consultant to devote herself to uncovering what there is be uncovered. Without the usual constraints on her time.’
It was Canterbury who wanted the investigation?
‘So – let’s just clarify this, Bernie – there is more to it than a decidedly iffy haunting.’
‘I’m assuming there is. I honestly do not know.’
‘But someone in Canterbury does.’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Bernie, we’re not somehow … indirectly working for the security services, are we?’
‘Good God, Merrily …’
‘All right. Suppose I was to conclude that the ghost story was a fabrication.’
‘You can do that?’
‘It’s a possibility.’
‘Then please do it,’ the Bishop said. ‘Soonest.’
Afterwards, she felt exhausted, but couldn’t settle. With the half-eight Eucharist tomorrow, she ought to be in bed, but …
She made two mugs of hot chocolate, took one to Jane in the parlour then came back, sat down in the scullery and reopened the phone. Rang Felix Barlow and asked if it would be OK to come and speak to Fuchsia tomorrow.
‘I know it’s late, Felix, but I need to fit it into my fairly rigid Sunday schedule. I’m sorry.’
‘Hang on, would you?’
Felix didn’t sound happy. Merrily heard him moving back into his tin home, and thought there were raised voices. She drank some chocolate, lit a cigarette, still unsure of what to make of this. It wasn’t unprecedented, but – if you excluded council tenants desperate to be rehoused – it was rare for anyone to invent a ghost story. Rarer still for anyone to transpose a relatively well known fictional story into a real situation.