Digging Deeper (13 page)

“I check each of those sites to see if I can work out what’s there and how far down it is. This machine is so sensitive it can pick out a single coin, but I’m looking for continuous lines. The pressure from the marquee could damage old pipe work, and I guess the bride and groom don’t want to suddenly shoot up in the air on a spout of water.”

Flick had an entertaining image of Giles and Willow propelled into the air by a fountain.

Jared droned on. “Judging from the random positioning of the flags that’s unlikely. There are no lines across the field, just isolated sites. I’ll check them out anyway. Of course, if we were really lucky, we could find a pile of coins, or if we’re not so lucky, an unexploded bomb.”

Flick smiled at the unexpected joke.

“Do I get a share if it’s pirate treasure?” she asked.

“I’m afraid not. We have to report all—”

Her interest in him dwindled. “Jared, it was a joke. What would pirate treasure be doing this far inland?” He might look like George Clooney, but he didn’t have his sense of humor.

“Oh. Right.”

“What are the rules if we do find something?” she asked.

“Anything over three hundred years old and at least ten percent gold or silver belongs to your Queen and we have to report it.”

“What if it’s two hundred and ninety-nine years old or less than ten percent gold or silver?”

“Then, that’s okay.” Jared smiled at her. “She doesn’t want it.”

“What if we said it was nine-point-five percent gold and it was really ten percent,” Flick whispered.

He looked worried. “No, we couldn’t do that.”

“We’d probably get sent to the Tower of London and put in the dungeon. Well, I would. You’d be hung, drawn and quartered.”

Finally, he gave her a broad grin. “Ah, you Brits have such a wacky sense of humor. Well, since we’re unlikely to find anything, I think we’ll be okay.” Jared took a couple of trowels from the canvas bag. “Why don’t you check what’s down here. You only need to look directly under the flag. This machine has pinpoint accuracy. It uses a pulse induction eddy current technique.”

“Ohh, a pulsing technique sounds fun.”

To her dismay, Jared missed the point and thought she was actually interested.

“It’s quite simple really. A pulsed current generates a magnetic field around the coil which induces time-varying currents in any nearby metal object and that in turn generates another magnetic field.”

Flick had been lost after the word “pulsed”.

“These magnetic fields induce voltage in the receive coil and when they’re amplified indicate the position of a metal object,” he continued.

She tried to look fascinated and gave up. “Wow, so where do I dig?”

Flick had expected whatever it was to be near the surface but reached about half an arm’s length down into the ground before the trowel met resistance. She felt a shiver of excitement trickle along her spine and moved a little more earth with the tool. Too slow, so she switched to her fingers, wanting to find out what it was before Jared came back from the other side of the field. Please don’t be a tin can or a hub cap. One surface at least was smooth. She pushed her fingers deeper and froze.

Oops. Flick’s heart began to beat faster. She felt certain she’d depressed something. That couldn’t be good. Keeping her fingers very still, she used her other hand to shift more soil. Flick didn’t like the feel of this at all. Jared might have joked about an unexploded bomb but that was exactly what Flick thought she had under her hand.

“Jared,” Flick called.

He strolled back.

“You know that joke you made?”

“You’ve found treasure?” He dropped down by her side.

“No, not treasure. I’ve just pushed a button or moved a switch or something. I think maybe it’s a hand grenade or a bomb.”

Jared’s face lost color so fast Flick thought he might faint. Instead, he retreated so rapidly, it looked like he was on his way to the next county.

“I think you’d better call someone,” Flick said.

“Get away from it.”

“Er…I’d like to, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. If I move my fingers something might happen.”

Jared went even paler and edged further away.

“Before you set off on a marathon, please get help,” Flick said.

As he bolted, she pressed her forehead against the pile of earth she’d removed. She was on her knees with her arm bent at an awkward angle beneath her and her backside sticking up in the air. It would be difficult to be less elegant.

———

Beck had watched from the entrance to the tent as the two figures wandered up and down in the field next to the dig. He’d intended to rewrite the first murder scene in his book, but he hadn’t typed a word. He could hear Flick laughing and felt unaccountably annoyed. When the man stood behind her and put his arms around her to demonstrate how to use the metal detector, Beck bristled. He went back into the tent to rummage for his binoculars. Who could think of writing at a time like this?

“Seen something interesting?” Pravit asked as Beck focused on Flick.

“Rare bird,” Beck said.

What the hell was she up to? He lurched as he saw the guy barreling down the field toward him. There had to be something wrong if Flick was involved.

“She’s got her hand on an unexploded bomb,” the man yelled and Beck’s heart went into free fall.

Dina screamed. Matt and Ross reached for their mobile phones.

“No calls,” Beck snapped. “All of you go straight up to the house and stay there. Jane, you phone the emergency services. All of them.”

He started running toward Flick.

“What are you doing?” the guy called. “Man, we have to keep away from there. We need to get the army or something. I have to call my boss. I’m gonna be in so much trouble for letting her help. He’ll kill me.”

Beck jumped over the gate and sprinted across the field. He gulped for breath as he reached her side. “You okay?”

“Just dandy. I thought I’d give a worm a bit of a tickle.”

Beck crouched next to her. Flick’s body largely obscured the hole she’d dug.

“Tell me exactly what you saw and what you did.”

Flick repeated it all. Beck was torn. The likelihood of this being a grenade or a bomb was very small. As far as he knew, Ilkley had not been subject to any air raids but there remained the possibility stray ordinance had been lost or jettisoned from aircraft. Plus the grounds of the Hall could have been used for army maneuvers. Ilkley Moor had been. Beck needed to assume the worst, especially because this was Calamity Flick.

“Can you keep your finger where it is?” he asked.

“If the alternative is losing it and a chunk of my head then I think the answer to that is yes, absolutely, at the moment,” she snapped.

“I’m trying to help.”

“Sorry.” Flick rubbed her forehead in the dirt. “You don’t need to stay. There’s no point two of us losing limbs.”

Beck took hold of her free hand and squeezed her fingers. “I’m staying.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Does trouble follow you or do you follow trouble?”

“Sorry about the pool,” she said. “It was an accident.”

“Jane said it wasn’t your fault, but that was all she’d tell me. What were you doing?”

“Don’t tell Jane I told you, but she and her costume were parting company. It was an emergency. She needed a towel, only Miss Itsy-Bitsy-Teeny-Weenie had other ideas. You happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A bit like now really. In fact, a bit like every time I’ve met you.”

Beck laughed. “I had noticed life is never boring when you’re around.”

“Oh God, I can hear it ticking.” Flick gasped. “You have to go. I think I’m destined to kill you. Maybe if you’re not here, I won’t die either.”

“Shhh.” Beck lowered his head to hers and he heard it, too. Faint but definitely ticking.

“I’m not going to leave you,” he said. “But if the ticking stops, forget about keeping your finger on anything. Just get up and run.”

“I really want you to leave.” Flick cast him a miserable glance. “You’re so gorgeous, I’d hate for anything to happen to you.”

“I— What?” Beck asked.

She hesitated then looked straight at him. “You take my breath away.”

Beck’s own breath caught in his throat. He wanted to give the right reply, but what was he supposed to say to that?

“What a pity you’re so hideous,” he said at last.

Flick gave a little laugh. “A guy with a sense of humor, just as I’m going to die.”

“You’re not going to die.”

Flick moaned.

“So have you got your breath back? I’m trained in CPR.” Beck smiled at her.

She lifted her head and nodded. “My fingers are going numb because I’m pressing so hard. But I’m beginning to wonder if I’m actually pressing anything at all. Maybe I haven’t touched a button or a switch. Do bombs have buttons or switches? Or is that just in films?”

Several sirens began to sound and the noise grew louder by the second.

“Everything is going to be fine,” Beck said. “Don’t move. Keep your hand exactly where it is.”

“I bet that’s what you tell all the girls.”

“Usually I like some movement.”

Flick grinned.

———

Henry couldn’t get into his drive for all the vehicles—several police cars, two fire engines, an ambulance, four army vehicles, a taxi that no one admitted calling and a guy on a moped delivering pizzas. Henry was relieved to see Hartington Hall still appeared to be in one piece. He abandoned his car and walked up the sweep of gravel to the house only to be stopped by a police constable who appeared to be just out of diapers.

“Sorry sir, you’re not allowed past this point.”

“I live here,” Henry said. “What on earth’s going on?”

“This is a potentially dangerous situation. A large unexploded bomb. The whole place could go up. I’ll have to ask you to keep behind the line.”

“What line?”

The policeman gestured in front of him. “Er…this imaginary line.”

“Bollocks,” Henry said. When he spotted more police heading toward him, he slipped to the back door.

Gertrude stood at the window of the drawing room with binoculars around her neck.

“What’s happened?” he shouted in her ear.

“Flick is trapped under a bomb.”

Henry grabbed the binoculars and almost strangled Gertrude he tried to focus on the field.

Although Beck protested, the men from the bomb disposal squad forcibly removed him to a safe distance. Flick watched them dragging him away, wondering if she’d ever see him again. If she did, she’d be embarrassed by what she’d said. If she didn’t, it would be because she was dead. Embarrassed or dead? What a dilemma.

Body armor had been draped around her though saving her liver and stomach wasn’t much use if she didn’t have arms and legs. Or a head. She had a feeling the helmet and face guard they’d put on her were unlikely to offer much protection when she lay directly over the bomb. And it was a bomb, Flick decided, because that was just her luck. How could she think it could be anything else?

Only one man remained with her. A sergeant named George and every few minutes he asked her if she was all right and she always said fine.

“You all right?” George asked.

“Fine,” Flick said.

It reminded her of the time she’d spent in hospital after she’d been knocked down by the local vicar speeding to evensong on his bike. The men and women in the ward spent their time competing over how ill they were, but the moment the doctors appeared and asked how they were, they always said “fine” and it had made Flick laugh. She’d been covered in bruises from head to foot and both shoulders had been dislocated because she’d tried to grab the handlebars as the bike hit her, but when the doctors had come to the foot of her bed, she’d said the same thing. “I’m fine.”

George was encased in protective gear but could move freely. For the last fifteen minutes he’d carefully dug a hole nowhere near her. Flick hadn’t liked to say anything. She wondered if perhaps he was very short-sighted or if there might be some more worrying reason why he wasn’t actually trying to get to the thing she had her finger on.

“Still all right?” George asked.

“Still fine,” Flick said.

As the hole he was making suddenly merged with the one she’d dug, Flick realized what he’d done. He couldn’t get at the bomb without moving her and moving her might be the last thing he ever did. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing for her. No trial. No going to prison for theft. No proving her innocence.

“I want to live,” she blurted.

George’s fingers touched her arm and he gave her a little squeeze.

“All right?” he asked.

“Fine,” Flick answered.

Slowly he began to move soil away from around her hand. Flick wondered if she could ask him to hurry because she needed to pee.

———

“What was Flick doing down there?” Henry asked.

“Some chap came and wanted to know where the marquee was going to go,” Gertrude said.

“Did she take the monitor with her?”

“Yes. She always wears it when she’s watching me. Can’t even open my bowels in private.”

Henry groaned. If he talked like this when he was her age he wanted Giles to shoot him. He quite liked the Inuit idea of sending their old folks out on ice floes. He wondered if Fewston reservoir ever froze over.

“So why aren’t you wearing your monitor?” Henry asked.

“It was annoying me. It’s over there.”

Henry went over to the fireplace and picked it up from next to the clock.

“Are you all right?” he said into it.

“Fine,” said a man’s voice. “Oh no, the ticking’s stopped.”

“Is there anybody there?” Henry tried.

“You said that without moving your lips and your voice has gone deep.”

“Is there anybody there?” Henry repeated.

———

George’s eyes were wide open.

“It’s the monitor round my neck,” Flick said.

George fumbled for a moment and then switched it off. The ticking stopped. Flick’s eyes met his. He turned it back on and the ticking started once more.

“I think that’s one mystery solved,” George said. “But don’t move yet.”

They lay face down, helmet to helmet. Flick realized she could hear a different sound now. As he shifted more soil, the sound became clearer. The strains of a rather tinny rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” rose out of the ground. Flick closed her eyes.
Fuck, shit and bollocks.