The Bone Garden (2 page)

Wesley smiled and looked over at Steve, who rewarded him with
a blank stare. But there were some things it was best to ignore, and Steve Carstairs was one of them.

The telephone on Wesley’s desk began to ring. He picked up the receiver and recited his name.

The voice on the other end of the line sounded nervous. ‘Sergeant Peterson. I don’t know if you remember me but we have met
at the station. My name’s Brian Willerby of Blake, Willerby and Johns, Solicitors.’

‘Hello, Mr Willerby. What can I do for you?’ Wesley racked his brains, wondering which of the constabulary’s not-so-valued
customers the solicitor was ringing to discuss.

‘I’d like your advice,’ Willerby began.

‘About one of your clients?’ His furtive tone had aroused Wesley’s curiosity.

‘Er, no. Actually it’s a personal matter. You see, I’m in rather a quandary about … In fact I’m very worried and I really
need to …’

Wesley heard a door open in the background and a muffled voice. Then Willerby’s voice again. ‘I’m sorry, Sergeant. Something’s
just come up. We’ll have to talk another time. Goodbye,’ the man concluded with businesslike confidence. Willerby obviously
hadn’t wanted whoever had entered his office to overhear their conversation.

Rachel looked across at him. ‘Everything all right, Wesley?’ she asked quietly.

‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged and returned to sorting through a pile of witness statements. It was probably nothing.

But he found he couldn’t concentrate on the paperwork and after a while he stood up and marched over to the inspector’s glass-fronted
office. After a token knock he let himself in.

Detective Inspector Gerry Heffernan sat at his desk, his sleeves rolled up to reveal a fine pair of nautical tattoos, relics
of his days in the merchant navy. He looked up at Wesley, grinned and scratched his head. ‘Hi, Wes. What can I do you for?
Everything all right out there, is it? No armed robberies? Serial killings?’

Wesley smiled at his boss. ‘Looks like we’ve hit a quiet time. All the local villains must be on holiday.’

‘So all’s quiet on the mean streets of Tradmouth.’ Gerry Heffernan sat back and his standard-issue inspector’s chair creaked
dangerously under his weight. ‘Let’s make the most of it, eh, ’cause I can’t see it lasting for long.’

‘It’s giving everyone a chance to catch up on their paperwork.’
Wesley paused for a moment. ‘But it could just be the calm before the storm.’

‘You know what you are, Wes? A born pessimist.’

Wesley grinned. ‘Actually, I wanted to ask you something.’

‘Fire away.’

‘Do you know a solicitor called Brian Willerby?’

‘I’ve met him a few times. Not a barrel of laughs,’ Heffernan said dismissively. There were some who didn’t appreciate the
inspector’s sense of humour: Willerby was probably one of them.

‘He rang me just now and said he wanted to discuss a personal matter; something he was very worried about. Then he was interrupted
by someone and he put the phone down. He sounded …’ Wesley searched for the word. ‘Furtive.’

‘I didn’t know you knew old Willerby.’

‘I don’t. That’s the point. I’ve only met him a couple of times and then only in the company of the villain he was representing.
I’ve no idea why he picked on me. I just wondered what you knew about him.’

‘Nothing much. He’s been a partner in Blake, Willerby and Johns ever since I can remember. Him and his wife come to divisional
dos from time to time.’ Heffernan thought for a moment. ‘That’s all, really. He’s just your average solicitor; turns up at
the station when a villain asks for his services. “Keeps himself to himself”, as the neighbours always say in a murder inquiry.
I’d file him under B for boring.’

‘Wonder what was worrying him.’

‘No doubt you’ll find out eventually.’

Wesley left Heffernan’s office, shutting the door quietly behind him. He looked around the main CID office. There was a subdued
holiday atmosphere and his colleagues seemed more relaxed than usual, enjoying the brief ebb in the normally relentless tide
of criminal activity.

But as Wesley sat down at his desk he felt a nagging unease. He remembered Brian Willerby’s nervous voice and his instincts
told him that something was wrong. And he kept wondering why Willerby had chosen to confide in him, a comparative stranger.
But no doubt, as Gerry Heffernan had said, he would find out eventually.

Neil Watson ran his fingers through his long brown hair and looked around the newly modernised room in what had once been
an old
stable block. He noted the freshly painted walls, the brand-new office furniture and the stainless-steel sink in the corner
– perfect for washing the finds – and smiled with approval.

‘Not bad,’ he said to Jake Weston, who had been given the task of showing him round the Earlsacre Hall dig. ‘All the latest
computer equipment as well, I see. Most digs I’ve been on we’ve been lucky to get a glorified garden shed. Nice. How far behind
schedule are you?’

‘The grand opening is in five weeks and all the archaeological work has to be completed well before then so that the gardening
experts can move in and recreate the old gardens. The problem is that we’ve been short staffed and reliant on inexperienced
volunteers. We were well behind before this skeleton was found and now things are even worse.’

‘Skeleton?’

‘Yeah. It – or rather she – was buried in the middle of the walled garden underneath a stone plinth. The coroner accepted
my verdict that it was probably a few hundred years old and said we could carry on with the work, but it still slowed us down
for a day or so. I suggested we call in more professional help so the director agreed that I could see if anyone was available
from the County Archaeological Unit. An American foundation has put a lot of cash into the project.’

‘So we’ve arrived like the US cavalry … just in time to save the day,’ said Neil with satisfaction. ‘It’s worked out well,
as a matter of fact. We’re just finishing off a dig at Stoke Beeching: Anglo-Saxon farmstead with an en suite Viking burial,
no less. Two of my colleagues are tying things up there and they’ll be along here tomorrow.’

Jake looked relieved that his workload was about to be shared. ‘I’ll take you to meet Martin Samuels,’ he said, making for
the door.

‘Who’s he?’

‘The trust director.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Enthusiastic,’ said Jake simply. ‘This whole project was his idea. He raised the money to buy the place from the last owner,
set up a trust, even got lottery cash for turning it into an arts centre when it’s all restored. It’s very much his baby.’

Neil followed Jake out of the stone building and they began to walk towards the house, passing through what remained of an
ancient gatehouse that led into a large walled garden. The walls had been
rebuilt or repointed very recently: the mortar between the rough stones looked fresh. A new-looking doorway set into the wall
to their left stood open to reveal another garden where figures in hard hats were working industriously with spades and wheelbarrows.

Neil stopped and looked around. The walled garden had been partially excavated, and he recognised the decorative cobbled paths
running around its edge as late sixteenth century in style. A network of gravel pathways had been exposed, weaving between
rectangles of rutted earth which, in happier days, would have been decorative parterres full of fragrant beauty.

Neil noticed that a large stone plinth was carefully propped against one of the garden walls. The holes at its centre suggested
that something had been secured there in days gone by; probably a sundial or some other focal point at the garden’s heart
that had been the last word in horticultural fashion in some bygone century.

‘You should have seen this place when we first started work,’ said Jake. ‘The whole area had been grassed over in the nineteenth
century so you wouldn’t have known this lot was underneath. The entire garden had gone to rack and ruin – self-set trees,
weeds, brambles, the lot – and we had to clear it all before we could assess it, but when we saw the geophysics results we
knew we had found something pretty spectacular in historical garden terms. You could see the layout clearly on the print-out;
typical Renaissance walled garden.’

‘Tell me about this skeleton that was found,’ said Neil.

‘Just there, slap bang in the middle of the garden.’ Jake pointed to the plinth. ‘That great lump of stone was over it. It
had probably held a sundial and it didn’t look as if it had been moved for years, if not centuries.’ He turned to Neil, his
blue eyes twinkling like those of one about to tell a particularly terrifying ghost story. ‘And the curious thing is that
the skeleton looked as if it was clawing its way out. A pathologist had a look at it and said that the poor woman had probably
been buried alive then had that great slab plonked on top of her. What a way to go, eh?’

‘Which pathologist was this?’ Neil asked, trying to sound casual.

‘I think his name was Bowman. Nice chap. Very chatty. You wouldn’t think someone’d be so cheerful in that line of work.’

‘I know him. He’s helped me out a few times when human remains have turned up unexpectedly.’

‘Well, let’s hope we don’t need his services again.’

‘Too right,’ said Neil with some feeling.

They had arrived at the house. In its day it had been a desirable country mansion; not large, but probably home to generations
of comfortably off Devon gentry. But now it was a shell. The outer walls stood solid, stripped of the ivy that had covered
them and the rendering that had hidden the sturdy stone construction. The ivy had been replaced by scaffolding and the roof
was a skeletal framework of new timbers.

‘Martin’s restoring it,’ said Jake as Neil studied the building. ‘It’s being done up and turned into an arts centre.’

‘Interested in the arts, is he?’

‘Oh, yes. We’ve even got a poet in residence who floats round the place watching us dig and writing bad poems about it. She’s
quite a lady is Jacintha,’ Jake said with a significant grin. Neil suspected there was a story there somewhere. ‘You’ll enjoy
it here, Neil. Never a dull moment.’

‘So how did this Martin Samuels come to buy the place?’

‘He’s always had a passion for old gardens. The owners of this house had abandoned the place for something more modern years
ago and put tenants in. Martin visited it back in the 1980s, saw what was left of the gardens and got quite excited. When
the tenants moved out in 1986 the place went to pieces and the house was badly damaged in a fire. Eventually Martin set up
a trust and raised the money to buy the estate from the family who owned it. He’s very single-minded – a man with a mission.’

‘How did he manage to raise the money?’

‘Donations from locals, various heritage charities, the lottery – and an American foundation has been extremely generous.
Funding’s not a problem at the moment but time is. That’s why we’re glad to see you here,’ Jake added as they passed under
an archway and walked up a wide flight of stone steps leading on to a high raised terrace in front of the hall. From here
Neil had a good view down into the walled garden below.

‘I’ve not done much garden archaeology,’ he said modestly. ‘It should be an interesting experience. How long have you been
working for the trust?’

Before Jake had a chance to reply a man emerged from the once impressive main doorway of Earlsacre Hall. He was probably in
his early sixties, tall, with steel-grey hair which peeped out from beneath the hard hat he was wearing. There was something
in his upright
bearing which suggested that he might once have been a military man.

‘Martin, this is Neil Watson from the County Archaeological Unit. He’s come to give us a hand. Two of his colleagues will
be arriving tomorrow.’

Martin Samuels’ eyes lit up and he shook Neil’s hand heartily. ‘Splendid. You’ve arrived in the nick of time. Jake’s been
our only archaeological expert, along with a couple of postgraduate archaeology students, and they’ve had to organise a horde
of volunteers with little or no experience of a dig, so things have fallen behind. Perhaps you and your colleagues could tackle
the area around the gatehouse that leads to the walled garden – there’s also the area near the centre of the wall on the east
side of the garden where there’s evidence from old paintings that there was a grotto or summerhouse of some kind built against
the wall. Our volunteers have cleared the vegetation for you so …’

‘That sounds fine. I’ll have a look at the geophysics results right away to get an idea of what’s down there,’ said Neil.
Martin Samuels’ passion for the project was infectious.

Neil turned to go. The secrets of the gatehouse and the grotto awaited him and he would lose no time in getting started.

‘I hope you’re not superstitious, Neil,’ said Martin unexpectedly. Neil turned round, curious. ‘A few people who’ve worked
here have been put off by some strange stories attached to this place. The walled garden has a reputation with the locals
for being haunted, apparently.’

Neil shrugged. ‘Doesn’t bother me. I don’t believe in that sort of rubbish.’

‘It never used to bother me either,’ said Martin with a secretive smile. ‘Until I came here. And then we discovered that skeleton
that had been buried alive …’ He didn’t finish the sentence.

Neil made no comment. He considered himself immune to ghost stories. And he had work to do.

He and Jake took their leave of Martin Samuels with no further mention of the supernatural. They had begun to walk back to
the walled garden in amicable silence when they saw a plump, dark-haired girl running towards them.

When she spotted them she stopped and bent double, trying to catch her breath, her eyes wild with panic. Eventually, when
she had regained her composure, she stood up and looked Jake in the eye. ‘Andy said to find you. There’s another one.’

‘Another what?’

‘Another skeleton … buried underneath the first one.’ She bent down again, still gasping for breath.

‘I suppose we should really let the police and the coroner know again,’ sighed Jake, resigned to another delay.