‘Bill Blore,’ Jane said slowly. ‘Wow.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Jane…’
‘Hey, I’m sorry, but Bill—’
‘You’re missing the point, Jane, and maybe I shouldn’t expect you to see the significance, but you’re thinking about the so-called glamorous TV presenter, while I’m seeing the man who is not Herefordshire Council’s favourite archaeologist.’
Jane thought about this for a moment, and then she started to understand.
‘The Dinedor Serpent.’
‘We still prefer to call it the Rotherwas Ribbon,’ Coops said primly. Well, he would. The council stuck to the original name, Ribbon, because that sounded less sexy than Serpent or Dragon. Easier to ignore.
But it was sexy. Unique, probably. Coleman’s Meadow, with real standing stones to uncover, might turn out to be more immediately spectacular, but the Dinedor Serpent was the only one of its kind in Europe. Seriously significant.
So significant that the philistine bastards on Herefordshire Council were shoving a new road across it.
Jane knew all about this. She’d pasted up the news cuttings as part of her A-level project, with a picture of Prof. William Blore next to the partly uncovered Serpent.
‘Coops, come on, what he said… the council were asking for it. You know that.’
‘Let’s not forget that if it hadn’t been for the work on the road, we wouldn’t have found the Ribbon in the first place.’
‘Serpent. Yeah, but—’
‘Same with Coleman’s Meadow and the housing plan. Same with most finds. Most archaeology today is rescue archaeology, you grow to accept that.’
‘Especially in this bloody county,’ Jane said. ‘But that’s what’s so good about Bill Blore. He doesn’t accept bureaucratic bullshit.’
In her picture, big Bill Blore was stripped to the waist, deeply tanned, hard hat at an angle. Thickset, maybe, but not fat. He’d said that Herefordshire, having been neglected for decades, was now yielding stuff that could change our whole perception of Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age societies.
And, because she’d quoted it in an essay, Jane knew exactly what he’d said about the council’s decision to go ahead with the new road, regardless.
‘He said local authorities shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions affecting major national heritage sites. Especially councils as short-sighted, pig-headed and ignorant as Hereford’s.’
‘Words to that effect,’ Coops said stiffly.
‘Those actual words… actually.’ Excitement began to ripple through Jane. ‘Coops, this is just so totally cool.’
‘Jane, it’s not. Blore’s got into Coleman’s Meadow through the back door, now he’s running this prestigious dig right under the nose of an authority he’s publicly trashed. That is not cool. That is a very uncomfortable situation for all of us.’
‘Only if you work for the council.’
‘They’re blaming my department, naturally. Lucky I still have a job. OK, unless Dore Valley had told us themselves, there was no way we could’ve known that Blore was quietly moving in while we were negotiating with them, but that’s not how some people see it.’
‘You wanted to leave the council anyway, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ Coops said. ‘I did.’
Another silence. Jane held her breath. She was picking up stuff she could really use — like at the university interviews? To show how seriously au fait she was with trench gossip.
She’d also be able to tell them she’d worked with Bill Blore.
Wow.
‘Just that when I was asked to join Dore Valley as a field archaeologist,’ Coops said, ‘nobody told me it’d be part of the Blore empire.’
‘But isn’t that, like… good?’
‘Goodnight, Jane,’ Neil Cooper said.
6
Bury them Deeper
Shirley West was, arguably, the most sinister person here. Shirley did foreboding in a way that was supposed to have gone out with the Witchcraft Act.
Impressive in a born-again Christian.
A couple in front of Merrily and Lol had slid away, leaving a clear view of Shirley in that grey, tubular, quilted coat. A lagged cistern with no thermostat, and sooner or later — you just knew — she was going to overheat.
Directly ahead of her, at the front of the stage, two pictures were pinned to a display stand. One was a photo showing an empty field with a five-barred gate, the conical hill rising behind it under an overcast sky.
‘Coleman’s Meadow.’ James Bull-Davies tapped his pen on the photo. ‘Earmarked for development of what are described as executive dwellings — like these.’
Tapping the picture below it: an architect’s sketch of a detached house with a double garage, token timber-framing, landscaped suburban gardens, under a blue-washed summer sky.
‘Field being within the village boundaries, therefore seen by county planners as acceptable infill.’
Merrily swapped a glance with Lol. Especially acceptable to Lyndon Pierce, local councillor and chartered accountant. One of whose clients was, as it happened, the owner of Coleman’s Meadow.
It was blatant, really. And because this was a small county, so much interconnected, so many business and family links, sometimes it seemed almost normal, no big deal.
Pierce had sat down now, was examining his nails, like his part was over. Rain smacked at the windows, making the frames shiver and rattle, smearing the reflections in the glass.
‘Complication, of course,’ James said, ‘being the recent discovery in Coleman’s Meadow, of significant archaeological remains. Now, I don’t want to pre-empt the results of the excavation, but—’
‘Old stones.’ A drawly male voice uncurling from halfway down the hall. Merrily didn’t recognise it. ‘Just a few old stones, long buried.’
‘Megaliths,’ James said. ‘The remains of a Bronze Age monument four thousand years old which people interested in such relics would, understandably, like to have unearthed and conserved.’
‘Not a problem, Colonel,’ Pierce murmured. ‘As I keep saying.’
‘In situ.’
‘Ah.’ Pierce sat back, arms folded. ‘That’s the problem, yes. Should a prime site be sacrificed in its entirety for a few stones that wouldn’t’ve been discovered if it hadn’t been for this project — I think that’s right, isn’t it, Colonel?’
‘Don’t think anyone’s ever denied that. However, we now know about them, and we appear to have two options: re-erecting them as a heritage site or—’
‘Three options, in fact,’ Pierce said mildly. ‘The stones could be dug out and taken away for erection on another site — in a park or somewhere.’
‘Somewhere well away from this village,’ Shirley West said.
She hadn’t moved. All you could see was stiffly permed dark brown hair sitting on the funnel collar of the grey coat.
Merrily held her breath.
‘Because, see, we have to ask ourselves,’ Shirley said, ‘why they were buried in the first place.’
‘Not our place,’ James said, ‘to pre-empt the results of the official excavation. Just to remind you all, the Parish Council will be discussing Coleman’s Meadow early in the New Year. We have no planning powers at this level, as you realise, but we can make our voice heard in Hereford. In theory. So that leaves you two or three weeks to make your individual views known to us. In writing, if you—’