was operating on nerves as taut as catgut and a level of sleep deprivation that a KGB torturer would have been proud of. ‘I’m very sorry, I’ll take it away,’ she said, aware that Cheryl stood behind her bristling with impatience. This whole scenario was turning into something surreal and faintly ridiculous. Maura felt herself about to snap, pack her bags and leave.
In the hallway Cheryl gave the tray a snide look. ‘Well?’
‘Someone threw a rock through the kitchen window last night. Bob came here to fix it, but we had to wait for the police, so by the time they’d come and he’d boarded it up, it was getting pretty late. I asked him to stay because, to be quite frank with you, Cheryl, I was cacking myself. It was my first night, someone lobbed a rock at me, and I didn’t want to be here on my own. As for the porridge, I’ve never made it from scratch in my life. I’m a nurse, not a cook, so forgive me if it’s not up to anyone’s cordon bleu standards.’
Cheryl’s untidy eyebrows rose, almost meeting her frizzy fringe. ‘All right, keep your hair on! There’s bigger things to worry about than bloody porridge.’
Maura gave her the filthiest look she could muster and stalked towards the baize door. What the hell was she doing in a house that had a bloody baize door for Christ’s sake? As she strode towards the kitchen she felt as though she’d been badly cast in the Mark Gatiss version of Upstairs Downstairs. Life in the Grange was like being an unwilling participant in some demonic episode of a B-grade dystopian time slip farce. Any minute now, some weirdo in a blue police box would turn up and rescue them all if she was lucky.
Cheryl took her time joining her and, by the time she arrived, Maura was scrubbing the last of the congealed porridge from the pan, wincing as the cuts on her hands sang with soreness inside the rubber gloves.
‘Look, I’m sorry, all right? I think we got off on the wrong foot. My mouth runs away with me and I speak before I think sometimes. I don’t mean to be nasty, it’s just my way. I’ve seen to his nibs and had a chat with Bob, so, why don’t you go and lie down for a bit, get some sleep, eh?’ She nodded at the washing-up. ‘I’ll see to that.’
Maura hadn’t been expecting that, and to her shame tears started to prickle at the corners of her eyes – her anger was so easily replaced by upset these days. What she wanted to do was hurl the dirty pan across the kitchen, pack her bag and leave, but she was dropping with tiredness and it wasn’t an option at that moment. Instead she set the pan on the draining board and turned to Cheryl, finding that the woman’s face looked more menacing with its mask of empathy than it did with the more familiar scowl.
‘Thank you. I’ll take a couple of hours if you don’t mind,’ Maura said before walking from the room with limbs that were stiff with self-consciousness. The prospect of festering at home, alone with her brooding bitterness, was increasingly feeling like a more appealing alternative to being stuck with Gordon and his porridge issues, or Cheryl and her mercurial temperament.
Sleeping on the decision and letting it ferment seemed the wise thing to do. If the current occupants and outside assailants would allow her to sleep – what with Cheryl clomping along the landing outside her door and more doors banging in the bowels of the house.
Finally, she heard Bob and Cheryl in the courtyard below, Cheryl telling Bob she was off to get some fresh air, him saying he was going to the sheds to find a glazier’s hammer. Maura was beyond caring what either of them did.
A squirt of deodorant on the sheets had masked the smell of camphor and sheer exhaustion created the illusion of a comfortable mattress. With bones as weary as her spirit Maura finally drifted into a dreamless, heavy sleep.
It took fifteen minutes for everyone who was working on phase three of Essen Fields to down tools and join the throng. They gathered around the JCB, which had been moving earth from one part of the plot to another, close to the border of Essen Grange. Very little time passed before they all agreed in a series of horrified mutters that, yes, that was human skull caught on one of the metal teeth, and yes, someone ought to call the police.
The foreman was observed to grit his jaw and reach for his phone somewhat reluctantly. The consensus was that Eric Perlman, CEO of the development consortium, would not be pleased. A few even muttered that the grabbing bastard would have had them cover up the body and cover it with concrete rather than bring proceedings to a halt like this. A small number hesitantly agreed with that, a mixture of survival instinct and morality hedging their opinions. They were contractors, and no work meant no pay.
The insalubrious opinions of some were masked by mentions of “poor bugger”, “I wonder who it was?” and “I’ll bet it’s ancient, there’s that burial ground around here somewhere…”, together with one “It’s a wonder the archaeology survey didn’t find it, would have been a mercy if they had.” The foreman listened to it all with a look on his face that suggested he’d like to kick the arse of the person who hadn’t done the due diligence on this. He was sure they were digging closer to the boundary than they should have been.
The foreman punched Eric Perlman’s number into his phone and muttered caustically ‘Heads are going to roll over this’ before making the call to his boss.
At that moment a clod of earth shifted in the bucket of the JCB and dislodged the skull, which, as if on cue, fell to the floor and rolled, landing a few inches in front of the foreman’s feet.
They were men, they found it funny and they laughed. Even the foreman allowed a smile to twitch at the corners of his mouth. And then the smirk was swiftly replaced by a grim, unsmiling line of lip when his boss answered his call.
While the workmen looked and laughed, I watched them. I saw nothing funny, no joke to be had. All I saw were thin, time-yellowed bones protruding from her grave and her head lying in the dirt, the grin on her face still as innocent as it had ever been. I had to turn away before memories added too much flesh to the dead girl’s bones. I had to turn away before I was seen and the ache in my heart made me scream.
Maura wasn’t entirely sure what had woken her. The strange hush that had fallen over the house, which it took her a few moments to recognise as the absence of noise from the building works, or the sound of the iron knocker being bashed against the front door. Either way, it was the noise of the knocking that forced her out of bed. It sounded like the iron ring had been lifted and slammed with a sense of determined urgency.
Her first instinct was to rush downstairs and check on Gordon. A man with his fixations would not react well to an unexpected intrusion. She should know – he’d spent most of the time since her arrival looking at her as if she were the spawn of the Devil, sent to try him. Well, when he was conscious anyway. He seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time sleeping, and was still dozing in his chair when she went to check on him. She had to speak to someone about his medication.
The snoozing Gordon was blithely oblivious to the voices that were coming from the drawing room. The room was a faded palace that had long ago lost its sheen, despite Cheryl’s best efforts with the beeswax polish, and it probably hadn’t seen company for years. The first surprise for Maura when she went in was the glimpse of a blue uniform through the window; the second and much more gut-wrenching one was that she recognised the detective who was perched on the edge of the ancient sofa. The last time she’d set eyes on Detective Sergeant Mike Poole she’d slapped him across the face and the memory of it made her feel sick with shame. It had been at Richard’s funeral, the last occasion on earth where she’d wanted to show herself up so badly.
Cheryl turned her head. ‘Oh, I was just going
