“If I have to,” said Owen Burroughs. “Then I want out of here. I’m not touching that JCB either. It can stay where it is for me.”
It would, whatever his preferences. Or those of his employer.
“Well, get along, man. Meanwhile,” he said to Arthur Root, “You’re the one with the local knowledge. No one gets under a heap of soil by choice. So, who is he, how did he get there? And did he fall into a hole, or did someone help him into it. Any ideas?”
Identification was the first issue, as Wynne-Fitzpatrick had pointed out. All stemmed from that. Who, indeed, was he?
“I can’t say anything about who he was, sir. It’s got to be something to do with the metal-detector, of course. They’re only used by amateurs for one thing, and that’s for finding old artefacts, preferably valuable. So the Kop’s got to be in it, but like Mr. Church told you, it will be just guesswork. Mr. Joshua Jowett’s the expert.”
“And I’m told he’s made himself scarce, Root. We’ll leave that for now. Let’s get back to your own area of expertise. Golf, say. Coincidence doesn’t exist, so it has to. Where’s the link, do you suppose?”
The rain spattered musically on the taut bright yellow nylon.
“I’d be whistling in the dark, sir. Comes back to the basics, I’d say.”
Tomlinson stooped over the skull, careful to keep clear of the adjacent ground. “Male, old, a big frame,” he said, and, echoing Root’s thoughts, “but who, that’s the thing. Never come across anything quite like this.”
Vehicles arrived, several of them. All but one made for the car park, and then were lost to sight from the Kop. A flashy little MG, that would be the Home Office pathologist, Dr. Jane Anderson, come to tell them that the punter in the rain was most definitely dead, Tomlinson noted. A Crime Scene van followed, then a blue Transit with a contingent of detectives, likely briefed already to start the interviews; and, in a big SUV came the man himself.
“Well,” said Inspector Tomlinson. “Company.”
He got up, to find Strapp indicating the progress of a dark blue Landcruiser as it made its noisy way towards them. Permission must have been given for the intrusion, thought Root. It was full, mostly with large male bodies, two in blue. It was not a decorous easy-paced trundle by an almost silent buggy: the blue patrol four-track thumped over rough ground alongside the eighteenth with panache.
Arthur Root felt a sense of déjá vu. The back-up Tomlinson had sent for. Uniformed constabulary would take over his duties. And he was back with Mabbatt.
“Can’t be,” said Strapp, squinting through the rain. “In the front, sir. Not the Super is it?”
Root knew that he would not have a great deal of contact now with the investigatory proceedings: the CID inspector had got all he needed. Maybe the evening meal would not be too far gone in Ursula’s new Bosch oven. Waiting around was over. The wheels had turned. A bit late, a bit slowly, but things would move fast now. He knew who, and what, was coming.
“Well, now,” said Tomlinson. “Surprise, surprise.”
* * * *
“Saw your bike out in the rain,” Josie told Gary Brand. “Nice bike. You got the Lycra gear? Bet you look good when you’re racing. I put it in Fred’s shed, the wooden one. Want to see it’s all right?”
From the kitchen window, Bliss watched her vanish with the tall young man. “Oh, you bitch,” he said.
“So why haven’t I met you before?” asked Gary.
“What I was asking myself,” Josie told him, drawing the creaking old door close. “I can’t stay long. Charlie’s always on the lookout. You’re not engaged or going regular, or owt?”
Gary knew that whatever answer he formulated, it wouldn’t much matter, not right now. The girl was firm and pliable at once; well-rounded but with taut muscle beneath. He put his arms round her and looked down into dark blue eyes that picked out a reflection of the bar of grey light where the door was slightly ajar. Tensions and flickers of violent flashbacks vanished. “Over here,” he whispered, drawing her to a darker corner.
“Oh, Gary,” she said, “we can’t be doing this, not right away, can we? Not so soon, love?”
In the same moment, they weren’t. A loud incoherent shout broke the quiet of the interior, with its heavy smells of cut grass and oil and its aura of secrecy and remoteness from the solid conservative Wolvers milieu:
“You mad bastard! You can keep your sodding job!”
The door was flung back, and a figure staggered halfway through the doorway. Gary’s fírm arms tightened. “Keep quiet, Josie,” she heard him whisper. “The JCB driver’s getting slagged off. We leave it alone. Not our problem. I’ve had my say to the police. I’m out of it.”
* * * *
Owen Burroughs recovered himself and faced his boss in the car park. He had been summarily sacked, after a bawling out that left him at first bewildered and then fiercely indignant.
“You’re telling me what, you bastard!” he yelled. “Just plough the poor sod back into his grave—you mean, just go on with levelling the Kop and shove him down a few feet under, like!”
That was exactly what Knight had meant.
“It could have been a few old bones from years back—it could have been an old dog or a few pigs they’d buried with swine-fever, for all you know, you bleeding Welsh git! Why couldn’t you just do what you’re paid for, not get me into a shit of a mess with the law! They’ve cordoned off the whole damned site, and I’m buggered if I’m keeping you on a minute longer! Just get off before I—”
That was when small, but thickset Owen Burroughs realised that seven years of labouring in the depot had just gone up in smoke. He’d signed up with Knight when he had come along to buy the ill-run business for peanuts. So far he’d shown acumen and kept the competent employees on. Owen went with the site. Now, he was out of it.
“Pick up your envelope in the morning,” Knight told him, quietly, but hard. “And don’t think of making waves. Ever. You got that?”
At a safe distance, Owen Burroughs yelled:
“You’re not right in the ’ead, you know that? You don’t act like—”
He stopped. There was no going back, not with such venom in the man. Out. Owen looked down at his wide, calloused hands. There was still strength in them. Maybe there was work Swansea way.
“Me, I’m gone!”
Listening at one of his many sounding boards, the steward smiled. The members and clientele, the paid help and the chance drop-ins: all their misfortunes nourished him, and more than made up for low pay and unending faux-subservience. And now that the coppers were involved, things were stewing nicely. Voices, low but young and passionate, vibrated around the old cupboard, long forgotten, never opened in half a century, where he accreted fragments of lives.
* * * *
Josie Marsden said it for both
