‘But I can tell you why, Mr Davies,’ Shirley said. ‘We don’t need no excavation to tell us they were heathen stones in a Christian country. Heathen stones in the very shadow of our church.’
Our church? Merrily knew for a fact that Shirley West was also a member of some born-again, pentecostal-type group in Leominster.
James said, ‘Mrs West—’
‘Bury them again! Bury them deeper! Or, if you have to dig them up, do as Mr Pierce says, put them in a city park or a museum where none of us have to see them.’
Merrily glanced from side to side. Was nobody going to point out — Jane would go crazy — that the stones erected elsewhere would be meaningless? That they were probably part of a prehistoric landscape pattern, aligned to the summit of Cole Hill?
‘Put iron railings around them. Confine them and—’
‘Yes, Mrs West,’ James said, ‘we take your point—’
‘—and the evil they represent. There’s a deep evil in that place and evil returns to it.’
Someone chuckled. A would you believe this crazy woman? kind of chuckle. Shirley whirled round.
‘Don’t you dare laugh at me! You come yere with your fancy talk and your unbelief. You who deny the Lord.’
‘Well…’ Lyndon Pierce opened his hands. ‘Anyone who knows me knows I’d be the last to make a religious issue out of this. But some of you might be surprised at how many folk’ve expressed similar sentiments to Mrs West’s.’
Opportunist bastard. Right…
Merrily was halfway to her feet when James Bull-Davies flicked her a warning with a slight turn of his head and a discreet one-handed wiping motion. She sat down, a tightness in her chest.
‘You may also,’ James said, ‘wish to examine the situation from the tourism angle — for better or worse, a vital part of our economy. Herefordshire has comparatively few Neolithic monuments, none of them, it might be argued, as potentially spectacular as this one. We could expect a substantial number of visitors.’
‘But what kind, sir? What kind?’
The drawly voice again, from somewhere in the middle of the hall.
‘Mr Savitch,’ James said.
Ward Savitch. Entrepreneur who’d bought up the old Kibble farm on the Dilwyn road, a mile out of the village. Turning it into a pleasure park for city slickers — paintballing weekends and corporate pheasant shoots. Jane wanted him dead.
‘I think,’ Savitch said, ‘that we all know the kind of tourism such places attract, and it’s the kind more likely to steal the milk off your step.’
Merrily watched Lol shaking his bowed head, profoundly glad that Jane had seen sense and stayed away.
‘Pseudo-Druids,’ Savitch said. ‘Witches in robes, or… not in robes. Or not in anything. That the kind of tourism you had in mind, Colonel?’
Nervous laughter, James lifting his hands for quiet.
‘Obviously, I’m being facetious,’ Savitch said. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I believe we can embrace the future and still hold on to the past. And in Ledwardine we’ve already got some of the finest period buildings in the county. That’s the kind of heritage we should be looking to conserve, not some lumps of rock.’
‘And the evil they bring yere,’ Shirley West muttered. ‘I know this.’
James Bull-Davies looked tired. ‘Anyone else?’
‘I haven’t quite finished,’ Savitch said. ‘Let’s not pretend, any of us, that we wouldn’t appreciate the improved facilities that would come with growth — supermarket, restaurants…’
‘Places for the nouveau riche to unwind in the evening,’ Lol whispered, ‘when they’ve finished blasting a few hundred tame birds out of the hedge.’
‘And, I believe, a fully equipped leisure-centre,’ Savitch said.
There was an explosion of hard rain on the big windows. The strip lights stuttered.
Lol said. ‘He’s got to be a plant.’
As all the lights came up and the first few people began to leave, collecting umbrellas from the rail by the main door, Merrily saw the man in the three-piece suit.
A young man in a three-piece suit. One of the first out. Black umbrella.
‘Nobody here with a Coleman’s Meadow Preservation Society placard,’ Lol was saying. ‘No Save the Stones sweatshirts.’
‘Perhaps that’s no bad thing,’ Merrily said. ‘Some of them might well have pentacles tattooed on their foreheads. Lol, you see that guy who just went out?’
‘Bloke helping Alice Meek?’
‘No, on his own. Suit with a waistcoat. You once saw Jonathan Long, didn’t you?’
‘Don’t think so.’
‘No.’ She thought about it. ‘Maybe you didn’t. He came to the vic, just once, with Frannie Bliss.’
‘A cop?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Probably wasn’t him at all.’
Although it was.
‘Um…’ Lol looked at her closely. ‘You did have something to eat before you came out?’
‘I… Yes, I did. Swear to God.’
Merrily stood up, shook out her coat. Yes, she was trying to get regular meals. Yes, she was trying to pull herself together, not get run down again, cut down on the cigs, have reflexology every couple of weeks from, God help her, Mrs Morningwood of Garway Hill. Yes, yes, yes.
‘Ah, vicar…’ James Bull-Davies was stooping between her and Lol, like some long-billed wading bird. ‘Wasn’t really the time, seemed to me, for clerical intervention. West woman’s unlikely to attract much support for Pierce. Unhinged, basically.’
‘In which case, you don’t think it’s worth me putting a bit of distance between us? Pointing out that the Church of England itself doesn’t actually have a problem with megalithic remains, which, of course, it doesn’t… And you’re looking unconvinced.’
‘Might be as well not to appear compromised by your daughter’s demonstrable enthusiasm, if that’s the best word…?’
‘She’s excited. It’s like they’re her stones, and it’s given her a direction at just the right time. James… is there anything in your family records about standing stones in Coleman’s Meadow?’
‘Should there be?’
‘If we could find out why they were buried, just to keep Shirley quiet?’
‘If it was done in secret, wouldn’t be any record. Look, if this site’s as significant as your daughter and her friends appear to think then English Heritage will step in to conserve it and neither that woman nor Pierce will be able to do a bloody thing about it.’
‘He won’t give up. Development of Coleman’s Meadow opens the way for a whole swathe of housing and before you know it… Ledwardine New Town? That’s not conspiracy-theorist talk, James, any more than Lyndon’s plans for this site…’
‘What’ve you heard?’
Merrily said nothing. What she’d heard was that Stu Twigg, another of Pierce’s clients, owned the ground that the village hall was built on. Ground now being eyed by an unnamed supermarket company. So that if the population of Ledwardine grew to a level which made a superstore not only viable but desirable, and the hall was to be replaced by a new leisure centre on a greenfield site elsewhere, the client — and, arguably, his accountant — would be quids in.
‘Forgot you were a close friend of Gomer Parry,’ James said. ‘Man with little understanding of the word slander.’
‘No, you didn’t. Look, nobody’s averse to immigration, all populations change… but surely, in a village, it should be a trickle. And it should be balanced. Right now, virtually the only people who can afford to move in here are the well-off who want to get out of London. So Pierce and his mates build hundreds of executive homes and an army of the retired rich move in, and the local kids have to move out to the cities, and Ledwardine starts to lose its identity… doesn’t even look like a village any more, just a chunk of suburbia with an open-air museum in the centre. I… Sorry.’ She fanned the air with her gloves. ‘Don’t usually go off like that.’