managed to get out encouragingly, if still a bit close-mouthed.
“Lucky,” said Gary. “Only one I’ve hit on the sweet spot this round.”
They progressed down the fairway in company, but each deep in thought. Root realised he was drifting. Work filtered through. There was the cannabis he suspected to be ready for the local market somewhere in his area. Skunk. That was it, nasty word. Could the local kids be using? Were pushers sidling up to the teenagers streaming out of the local comp? On my patch? But that wasn’t Root’s only worry. It seemed likely as Root had painfully learned from far too many close encounters with domestic tribulation, that with Gary fresh home, he and his mum had a problem.
But Arthur Root wouldn’t spoil the lad’s day.
He seemed more relaxed now. Was he?
* * * *
It could be, Gary told himself, a damn sight worse. But I’m alive, a lance-jack no longer, but right here in South Yorkshire, admittedly with an uncertain future to consider: yet with Josie’s firm, swaying and delightfully sinuous way of filling her black waitress’s dress to contemplate: and all amongst green, rolling fairways under a blue sky—all of it not in a grim cold desert, but in England, he thought, just as the whooping began.
The row from the big earth-moving vehicle—the source of the loud, bleating intermittent whoops—was all-pervading.
“Devil of a row,” growled Root, voicing loudly his sympathy with his more senior fellow-members in the gesticulating foursome ahead. “What’s got into that JCB driver? Gone on strike? Wasp stung him?”
“I think it’s more than that, Arthur. I’d say it’s trouble.”
“What d’you mean, trouble, Gary?”
“Three whoops, Arthur. It’s the international distress signal. All else fails, coms gone, that’s it. Heard it too often lately.”
CHAPTER 2
“Of course, Gary. I hadn’t forgotten, just wasn’t expecting anything. Three whoops, repeated. Some sort of trouble, yes, has to be. We’ll go and meet him. Hey, there! We’re coming over.”
Arthur, thought Gary, wasn’t as quick or as sharp as he remembered him from when he himself was just a kid. Arthur Root then, tall and wide, not a spare ounce on him, was his hero. Quiet and calm, strong as any light-heavy Gary had ever seen fight, he was as sharp as a starved ferret then when it came to facts and events. Was he getting a bit shaky with age?
“Arthur, what is ailing him, do you think,” he asked, as the JCB’s driver reeled away from the big all-purpose vehicle. He was obviously perturbed by the driver’s plight.
“He’ll tell us soon enough. Come on. He’s had it.”
The shortish older man stopped and almost fell to the ground. Root steadied him. “All right, lad, let it all out, all of it. You’re going to be better when it’s gone. Finished now?”
The old man vomited again.
“He’s in shock, Arthur. Sit down, will you, please. What’s your name, old son? I know, something bad, isn’t it? So you’re on with a job, and just take your time and here’s the local Community bobby, you’ll have heard of him if you don’t actually know him, right? Here’s P.C. Root, yes, he’s a policeman, he’s here to help, just tell us your name first and we’ll start from there. You all right with this old anorak round your shoulders?”
Gary was doing well. But then he’d been a medic with the Terriers.
The old man was now focusing. First on Gary, then on Root himself.
“Name, is it now? I’m Owen. Owen Burroughs. Driver for Mr. Knight. Come to level that bit of a hill for you, haven’t I?”
He was looking intently at the massive girdering of the JCB, still grunting with power, but blade up now. Owen shook as he pointed. “Near took the head clean off, but I spotted it, just. Stopped, got the blade up.”
Head? Had he heard aright?
“Take your time, Owen. Just tell me.”
“He’ll blame me, he will,” muttered Owen Burroughs. “Bobby-trouble he could do without. Wish he’d given that daft new lad from Hagthorpe the job. Never seen anything like it outside the horror stuff on telly after midnight. Not watching any more, am I?”
Gary heard the last bit, but he was unheeding of chance remarks.
“Your job, Arthur, not mine,” he said.
A head, thought Root. Knight would certainly not like it, for it most definitely was, as Burroughs put it, bobby-trouble. Could it be a part of the complex mythology and legend of Anglers Kop—? Maybe a long-dead barbarian still with his golden armlets and iron-bossed shield? Or a Roman legionary? He moved fast and identified the relict for what it was.
“Dear god,” he said aloud.
There was a human skull faced away from him, but not a decayed, ancient carapace, no. Not Roman or Iron Age Briton. A human being’s head poked like some outlandish fungus from the disturbed Kop’s grey-black, arid soil. And not all that long dead, either. There was still hair about the crown. Bizarrely, there was also an arm sticking out of the soil. Root wanted a pen in his grasp and the notebook from his tunic pocket. There. Windcheater.
Automatically, he scribbled down the main facts. Time, date, place. Present were the following. I identified provisionally what I took to be. There was more. Down it went, very briefly, but a true and indisputable log. It would soon be needed. Still more.
“Now,” he muttered. “What’s that?”
And what was that showing an inch or two above the untidy heap of gritty soil? Metal, shiny metal. Old? An ancient artefact? No, not anywhere nearly right. Any notion of an archaeological find could be dismissed.
So could any thought of doing more than his immediate duty, which was to establish an authoritative presence; and diligently keep prying eyes and contaminating feet and fingers away.
As First Officer Attending, he could not leave here. It was his primary duty to guard the corpus delecti, the most important piece of evidence there would ever be in this case. So here I stay.
“Gary, get over to Mr. Wynne-Fitzpatrick there. Setting off down the eighteenth. Call him ‘Major, sir’, he’ll respond quicker. You’ve seen him before, and you should be seeing him at five today, but I suspect that’s off now. Tell him—ask him—to hold up play at the sixteenth. He’ll send the greenkeeper out on his tractor, most likely. Can’t ask him here, it’s too up and down, his angina won’t stand the strain. Nor his gout, which must be giving him gip right now they’re finishing. You’ve got young legs. Say I want play stopped before the seventeenth tee.” Gary looked as though he had suggestions. Root looked around the macabre scene. “Just wait a moment.”
This was old bones; not millenially-old bones such as would bedazzle old Josh Jowett: but conceivably a crime scene. He’d be exceeding his authority by quarantining the members. Yet there was a middle way. “No,” he said abruptly. “Names of everyone here. All the staff remain, no exceptions. On my authority.” He already had his police radiophone ready to report what was looking
