Worthless Remains (24 page)

‘Find me at the Cross Keys on the Midford Road,' I told him.

‘I'll bring the night-vision stuff with me.'

The Dealey brothers became engrossed in the menu; I followed their example. The Cross Keys menu was as flowery as you could ask for. Here almost everything was ‘infused' with one thing or another. It featured delights like half roasted lemon & herb chicken, which I hoped referred to the portion, not the cooking time; mysterious items like ‘prepared folded flat bread' and ‘hand beer-battered onion rings' as well as reassuringly 1970s nonsense like gammon topped with egg and pineapple.

When Tom went to the bar to order food and drinks I went up too. They had both chosen the mega mixed grill (lamb chops, steak, gammon, chicken breast, sausage, black pudding, topped with two fried eggs, mushrooms, tomato, chips, peas and coleslaw as well as the famous hand beer-battered onion rings) while I chose the less dizzying pumpkin ravioli. I let Tom get ahead to join his brother and carried my beer slowly past their table. Mike was taking a good gulp of lager, then said temptingly: ‘There's tons of ready meals in the freezer, too.'

Tom sipped from his Guinness, licked the foam from his lips and said dismissively: ‘Yeah, all of it Indian, of course.'

‘No, no, not
all
of it,' I heard Mike protest, then I was past them and out of earshot. I fished my mobile from my jacket and took a couple of stealthy shots of them, to later send to Haarbottle as proof that I was working hard on Griffins' behalf, then settled back. It felt good to be away from the hotbed of resentment and strangeness that was Tarmford Hall. Even from this short distance away it looked like a theatre where an absurd play was being performed, or perhaps more than one play, running parallel across the same stage, intersecting here and there, towards an uncertain ending. Was there more than one playwright at work, more than one director? What was certain was that, perhaps with the exception of Carla, everyone thought they were the leading character. Or was I wrong about Carla? She seemed devoted to Mark Stoneking and had obviously been at Tarmford Hall for a while. Stoneking himself thought she was indispensible; did she think the same of herself? How much did Carla resent the intrusion of the
Time Lines
crew? Surely if it pleased Stoneking she would put up with it for a week without sabotaging it. Stoneking himself was torn between loving and hating the programme makers. It was the archaeology he liked and the TV circus he loathed. Olive Cunningham seemed to resent everything and everybody, and despite her age did swing a good stick. But was she mad enough to climb on to the roof of the Hall in a thunderstorm and put her shoulder to a stone urn weighing at least 150 pounds? Had some dishes at the Roman feast been deliberately poisoned? It was of course a cliché that poison was a female weapon but I couldn't rule out a man's hand in that either. Yet all my suspects had been taken ill . . .

Tim's arrival interrupted these pleasant musings. He acknowledged me with a nod of his woolly head, bought drinks at the bar and joined me at my table, putting a fresh pint in front of me.

‘Perfect timing,' I said and drained my first pint, then started on the next.

‘You can never tell just from looking at them, can you?' Tim said with a tiny nod in the direction of the brothers.

‘Quite. If someone unequivocally said to you that those two were up to no good you'd soon find things that looked suspicious, yet if someone said, “Those are the Dealey brothers, really nice guys”, then you'd see the opposite. My problem is that I
want
him to be guilty. Because there's money in it.'

‘How much?'

‘Seven and a half.'

‘Not bad money for sitting in the pub,' Tim acknowledged.

‘Yeah, well, it has its moments.' This was one of them, since just then the waitress arrived with two enormous oval platters for the Dealey brothers. The barbecue aroma of their grill carried all the way to our table. A minute later the waitress reappeared and brought my own colourful plate of food.

‘What is
that
?' Tim said doubtfully.

‘Pumpkin ravioli and salad,' I said defensively.

Tim groaned. ‘You're incorrigible. Why couldn't you have ordered something real like those two?'

‘Because you'd have pinched half of it?'

‘Well, you have certainly nothing to fear from me with your rabbit food.'

‘I had rabbit food yesterday, too. You would have liked it; it had a rabbit in it. Did you have time to find out anything about the menagerie at Tarmford Hall?'

‘Some.' He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from his jeans and smoothed it out on the table where it absorbed some beer spillage. ‘Right, Cy Shovlin, your producer. He seems totally unremarkable. Started in children's telly like they all do, did local telly, then a couple of pilots for history documentaries that sank without a trace.
Time Lines
is his big break but his ambition is limitless, apparently.'

‘Yes, I believe that.'

‘Those two production workers I could find nothing on apart from various credits for TV work, all nuts-and-bolts stuff; both have been on the programme from the start. Mags Morrison, your director, has also been there from day one. She worked her way up through cookery shows and some docu drama – you won't have heard of them since you don't have a telly. The archaeologist, Andrea Clementi, she's quite a big cheese at Cambridge when she's not doing this, specializing in something or other, I didn't write it down, it had too many letters. She gets some flak in the press for being on a populist show.'

‘Are there any suspicions that things on the show might be rigged?'

‘Like what?' Tim said, squinting at his piece of paper where his felt-tip writing was fast dissolving in beer stains.

‘Like artefacts being brought in from elsewhere so they can be found on camera?'

‘Not that I saw. I don't think her integrity is in question in that way. It's probably envy of the telly money that prompts the criticism anyway.'

‘Anyone else?'

‘Julie Somebody, my ink is running . . .'

‘Rhymer,' I supplied, spearing a pillow of ravioli.

‘Field archaeologist, studied in Bristol, got her degree two years ago, volunteered on the programme during her degree, got a paid job last year. The chap, Adam Horspool, is fresh from Cambridge, must have studied with the Clementi woman. Perhaps she got him the job.'

‘I'm sure half her students would give their right arm to get on telly with her; must be quite a queue.'

‘And that's your lot, I think,' he said and crumpled up the paper. Tim's filing system is worse than mine. ‘Did it help?'

‘Not yet. I don't feel I'm learning much either by watching those two put away half a farmyard. They must have digestive systems made of steel.'

Both brothers managed to get through their enormous platters in the same time it took me to eat my rabbit food under Tim's disapproving eye.

‘Hey,' said Tim, ‘I think they're leaving.'

‘Damn, I meant to get outside before they did.' But it was a false alarm; they were taking a toilet break. Their pints were still half full, I noticed. I knew the toilets in this pub and didn't envy Mike the task. ‘When they look like they're about to leave we'll go outside before they do. We'll follow in your car.' Tim was going cross-eyed with boredom. ‘Just to see what happens next. If they both go back to Mike's bungalow we shan't bother watching; you can't see in.'

‘There's gear we can use, you know,' Tim suggested suggestively.

‘Yes, I know. But getting caught installing it in his house could cost more than the job is paying,' I reminded him.

‘Yeah, yeah. OK, how about a honey trap, then? We'll get a woman to make advances towards him. See if he suddenly gets the use of his undercarriage back.'

‘What if his injury is real and he genuinely falls for her? That would be cruel. And when you say “a woman”, just which woman exactly did you have in mind?'

‘All right, it was just a thought,' Tim said defensively.

When the brothers came back from the toilets, Tom did not sit down – our cue, I thought. ‘Let's go.'

I had been right. Mike finished his Guinness, Tom drained his lager and just as we squeezed past them he mumbled: ‘Please no one mention food for at least a week.'

‘We'll follow them in your car,' I told Tim, ‘in case they remember my DS.' We watched from inside Tim's new Audi TT, another black little number, as the brothers left the pub. Tom stood by the side of Mike's Honda, helping him in and stowing his wheelchair for him. ‘This looks like a farewell,' I said. ‘Tell you what, I'm sick of Mike's bungalow; let's see how the walking brother lives. He drives that Astra over there, follow him. If Mikey is faking it then Tom must be in on it, surely.'

‘I thought we were going to Mark Stoneking's manor?' Tim complained.

‘Yeah, we will,' I said soothingly. ‘Just follow him home for now. Not if he lives in Drumnadrochit, obviously.'

Tom Dealey did not live on the shores of Loch Ness but in Paulton, an ex-mining village south-west of Bath. He drove fast, often overtook cars, which at some stage made me think he had noticed us following, but he slowed down once he reached the village and we followed him without problem into a fairly prosperous estate of modern detached houses. He stopped in front of a bland house with a well-kept bit of lawn and a single garage. Tom Dealey parked his car on the road, which elicited groans from us – since it meant he might just be visiting someone – and when he got out he didn't give us a second glance as we drove past. Tim drove around the corner and stopped. ‘Now what?'

I was already out of the car. ‘Just wait here,' I said and legged it back to the corner, hurrying to catch him before he disappeared, but I needn't have worried. The garage door was open and when I walked past as though I had business further down the road I saw why Tom Dealey had parked his Astra on the road: in the centre of the garage, its lines unmistakable, stood a wine-red Hayabusa GSX1300R motorcycle. He was just admiring it for a moment, then he closed the garage door and let himself into the house. I legged it round the block and fell back into the passenger seat next to Tim who sat, hands folded on top of the steering wheel, resting his head on his hands.

I put on my seatbelt. ‘Right, let's go.'

Tim started the engine and drove off. ‘And what did we learn from this exercise?' he asked.

‘That the family are bike nutters. Mike Dealey is in a wheelchair after his bike accident but brother Tom still rides a Hayabusa.'

‘And what's that when it's at home?'

‘It's a thirteen-hundred cc Suzuki. It does nought to sixty in less time than it takes you to say it. If he rides the bike the way he drives his Astra he might come a cropper without the aid of a white-van man talking on his mobile. Perhaps I'll get PC Whatsisname to check him out, see if there's a family history besides biking.'

Back at the Cross Keys I hopped into the DS and Tim followed me down the country lanes. Chatting on the hands-free mobile (21st-century Honeysett!) on the way to Tarmford I filled Tim in with what had been happening at Tarmford Hall. From the kind of questions he asked I suspected he was more of a Karmic
fan than he cared to admit. But the picture I painted of life at the Hall must have been less than glamorous, because Tim said: ‘Perhaps you really can have too much money.' As we crossed the Tarm at the ford the signal began to break up. It was just before sunset when we arrived at the gate, which soon groaned menacingly open.

Tim stuck his head out of the window. ‘Holy Moly, it looks like a holiday camp run by the Addams Family.' He followed me very slowly, weaving along the drive to dodge the countless potholes that had not been improved by the recent traffic, and which were now filled with rainwater. We parked on the lawn. ‘Okay, I'm impressed,' Tim admitted as he took it all in. ‘It's amazing what a dozen LPs of incoherent noise can buy.'

‘Wait until you see the back of the place.' We walked around the south side of the Hall where the view opened up across the lawns towards the lake and woods.

‘Wow. Capability Brown?'

‘Not quite. Sam Gower, Stoneking's jailbird gardener. He'll not like what's been happening here.'

‘I'm not surprised. Still, it's only grass.'

Though
Time Lines
was still observing a day of rest the devastation of the lawn was becoming ever more obvious. Not only the excavation – three trenches so far, one of them ever-widening – but also the spoil heaps, holes dug by the nighthawks, yellow patches where the camps had stood and black patches where camp fires had been lit. The digger had not been kind to the grass either and a path trampled by the crew between excavation and catering van had also become quite pronounced.

‘He didn't design it, of course, just keeps it all going.'

‘Nice job.'

‘Depends what your employer is like.'

Some of the intestinally unchallenged diggers and geo-physics experts enjoyed the sunset on the terrace, drinking, chatting or reading dog-eared novels. Of the rest of the team there was no sign. ‘So where do you want to stick the cameras?' Tim asked.

I pulled him out of earshot. ‘Not so loud; half of our suspects are sitting on that terrace.' We ambled over to the large trench.

Tim stood and admired the mosaic. ‘That's some mosaic. I wouldn't mind a floor like that in my bathroom. What are they going to do with it once they have finished?'

‘Fill it back in.'

‘Seriously? But why? It's a waste, isn't it?'

‘Best way to protect it for the future, apparently.'

‘What for? Why's the future more important than the present?'

‘It isn't. But you're not supposed to steal from it.'