The Bone Garden (25 page)

‘Can you tell us what you know about Brian Willerby?’ asked Gerry Heffernan, interrupting the cosy scene.

‘Not much,’ Charles replied, glancing at Rachel. ‘I’ve met him a few times to sign papers and all that, but we’ve never had
anything to do with each other socially. Not until the cricket match anyway, and I hardly talked to him then. He was late
and then he went and disappeared after the first innings, so apart from the odd comment when we were fielding, I hardly said
a word to him.’

‘But there was a time when you were standing next to him on the boundary. I saw you whispering to each other.’

‘I was only relaying the captain’s orders: he tells us where he wants us when we’re fielding. And I probably commented on
the direction of the ball, the batsman’s technique, tactics, that sort of thing.’

‘Have you played in matches with him before?’

‘As a matter of fact, no. He wasn’t at the other matches I played in this season. He only turned out when we were a few men
short, and I think he was only asked on Saturday as a last resort.’

Gerry Heffernan leaned forward, looking Charles in the eye. ‘So you wouldn’t say you knew anything about his private life?’

‘I knew he was Martin’s brother-in-law but nothing else, I’m afraid. Sorry I can’t help you.’

‘Where were you during the tea interval?’

Pitaway’s cheeks reddened. ‘Avoiding Jacintha … and I was talking to your colleague, Wesley, for some of the time. Nice chap.’

Gerry Heffernan drew the photograph of John Jones out of his pocket once more. It was worth another try. ‘Have you ever seen
this man?’

Charles took the picture and studied it earnestly. ‘No. No, I don’t think so, sorry. Is this the man who was found in that
caravan in Bloxham? I saw it on the local news.’

‘Yes, that’s right. We’re trying to identify him.’

‘Best of luck, then.’ He handed the photograph back. ‘Surely someone must know who he is. It’s only a matter of time, I expect.’

‘Mmm. I expect it is. Well, we’d better go and let Ms Hervey have her room back.’

‘Thanks, Inspector … er, DC Tracey.’ He gave Rachel a dazzling smile which, Heffernan noticed, she returned with quite unpolice-womanlike
enthusiasm.

‘He’s nice,’ commented Rachel as they walked back to the incident room.

Heffernan looked at her and shook his head. What a wonderful thing it was to be young.

Colin Bowman had finished. He had pronounced the life of Captain Jonah Parry well and truly extinct with his usual aplomb,
and ordered the bones to be brought to him at the mortuary for examination as soon as the archaeologists had lifted them from
the earth.

As soon as Neil Watson had seen the bones safely into the mortuary van, he wandered off towards the stable block. He heard
Matt calling after him. ‘Come on, Neil. Give us a hand with this trench. Where are you off to?’ But Neil didn’t answer. He
had other things on his mind.

His pace quickened as he approached the room where Claire worked. He opened the door and found her sitting at her desk, poring
over what looked like an ancient letter. When she saw him she stood up, smiling shyly.

‘I’ve found a couple more letters,’ she said. There was excitement in her voice. ‘This one’s dated June 1685 and it’s actually
from Richard Lantrist telling his brother that he’s meeting up with the rebels at Taunton. It’s fascinating. Richard sounds
so nice in this letter, so enthusiastic for his cause. I wonder if he’s not the murderer after all. I still think the dodgy
head gardener theory needs looking into – he’d have as much opportunity as Sir Richard for burying bodies in the garden. Mind
you, if he’d been a slave all those years, that would be enough to change anyone’s character. What do you think?’ Neil stayed
silent. ‘You’re very quiet. What’s the matter?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Why did you cross Brian Willerby’s name out in your address book?’ he heard himself saying, not quite believing that he’d
summoned up the courage to utter the words.

His answer was silence. Claire stood quite still, staring down at Richard Lantrist’s letter. It was a full minute before she
looked Neil in the face. ‘It’s none of your business,’ she said with quiet determination.

‘But he was murdered. If you knew him don’t you think you should tell the police?’

‘If he was murdered, he deserved everything he got,’ she said with sudden and unexpected brutality. ‘I’m not telling the police,
and if you mention it to your friend Wesley you can forget anything between us.’ She swallowed hard, then began to speak again
more softly. ‘I promise you that I had nothing to do with his death. I’m just asking you to trust me. It was just something
that happened a long time ago and it’s got nothing to do with all this. Please.’

Neil saw that her eyes were beginning to glisten with tears. He went to her instinctively and put his arms around her.

‘Just trust me,’ she whispered.

‘Okay,’ said Neil gently, kissing the top of her head.

Wesley Peterson looked at his watch and then at his desk. It was 5.30 – time to grab the chance to get home at a reasonable
time. But he knew that work would be the place to stay if he wanted peace and quiet: thanks to Pam’s return to teaching on
Wednesday, home had descended into chaos. The paperwork generated by a class of thirty ten-year-olds, even before term began,
almost exceeded that of a murder inquiry, and presently all that paper seemed to be deposited on Wesley’s dining-room table.

Pam herself was tense and harassed and Michael, sensitive to his mother’s mood over the past few days, had lost his usual
easy-going nature and whinged each time she left the room. Things would settle down once term began, Wesley told himself optimistically:
he had always been one to look on the bright side. But for the moment he was in no hurry to get home.

It wasn’t as if he was short of something to do: there was a mound of paperwork on his desk. But he found himself fighting
the temptation to seek Neil out; maybe to indulge in a pint in the King’s Head and discuss the skeletons and the strange history
of Earlsacre Hall.

The discovery of Captain Jonah Parry’s pocket watch had fired his imagination. The skeleton, he assumed, was that of a seafaring
man who possessed the watch bearing the date 1701, the same year in which the other two skeletons had probably met their grim
deaths. He
must have been well liked and respected if his fellow officers had presented him with such a gift. He was a man who would
have been missed.

Then, by force of habit, he began to consider other possibilities. The man whose bones lay beneath the shell grotto might
have been a common thief who had stolen Captain Parry’s watch. But then why was the watch buried with him if not to hide his
identity? Such a timepiece would have been of considerable value in those days and, unless the inscription would lead to questions
being asked about the captain’s whereabouts, the murderer would have had nothing to lose by disposing of it for profit. And
what self-respecting thief would bury gold sovereigns with the body of their victim? The skeleton was that of the captain,
Wesley was certain.

The desire to share these speculations with Neil eventually triumphed over the prospect of the waiting paperwork. He left
the incident room and opened the door to the room the archaeology team were using as their office. He looked round at the
tables laden with plastic trays full of finds. A couple of computers sat at the end of the room, their grey screens lifeless.
It looked as if everyone had gone home.

As Wesley shut the door behind him he spotted Neil’s retreating back. He called after him, but Neil began to walk away faster
and disappeared towards the hall at a cracking pace. Wesley looked at his watch again, wondering whether he should take the
trouble to follow him. It never occurred to him that Neil was trying to avoid a meeting: they had been friends a long time
and old friends didn’t avoid each other.

After a few moments Wesley’s conscience got the better of him and he made the decision to go home. He knew Pam might need
some support, as the next few days were going to be tough. And besides, he was hungry.

At ten past six he opened the front door of his house and found Pam in the hall, sitting on the stairs with the telephone
cradled in her lap. She smiled bravely up at him and covered the mouthpiece. ‘I’ll get supper in a minute. It’s my mum,’ she
said in a loud whisper. ‘She’s on about Jamie. She wants to bring him round again.’

Wesley pulled a face. Pam was capable of making her own decisions, but he hoped she’d be firm with her wayward mother. He
went into the kitchen and began to set the table. As his mother had always had a demanding job as a family doctor, he had
been
house-trained at an early age, something Pam was eternally grateful for.

After a few minutes Pam walked into the room and looked at him approvingly. ‘I had a struggle getting her off the phone. She’s
coming round again tomorrow night and bringing lover boy. She’s bringing a takeaway with her. I insisted on that.’

Wesley felt a wave of anger. It wasn’t fair on him during a murder inquiry – and it certainly wasn’t fair on Pam. ‘But you
start back at school the next day. Can’t she wait till the weekend?’ He mentally added the words ‘thoughtless cow’.

‘They’re going away on Friday. A romantic break in Paris.’

‘Very nice,’ said Wesley, trying to conceal his envy. ‘I’ll probably be working again this weekend. An unromantic break with
Gerry Heffernan.’

‘How’s it going?’

He took a deep breath, glad that she was taking an interest in his day. But then it was a reciprocal arrangement: he would
be expected to listen sympathetically to her complaints about a teacher’s lot when she was back at work.

‘We’re still no nearer identifying the body in the caravan but there’s a possibility that the second victim might have killed
the first. And Neil’s found another skeleton in the Earlsacre gardens – possibly a sea captain. Some valuable statues have
been nicked … and we’ve uncovered a brothel in Tradmouth staffed by students eager to supplement their meagre loans. But apart
from that …’

‘A brothel in Tradmouth?’ Pam raised her eyebrows. Wesley’s job certainly threw up more interesting things than a day in the
classroom. ‘You never know what goes on behind closed doors, do you? And students? Makes a change from the holiday job in
a supermarket.’

‘The Chief Super’s name was mentioned too. And the madam was a dead ringer for Maggie Thatcher.’

Pam had been about to inquire about Neil and his budding romance with Claire, but Wesley’s last revelations rendered her temporarily
speechless; she shook her head, a bemused smile on her lips. Wesley decided to take charge of the food.

‘Did your mother have anything else to say for herself?’ he asked as the spaghetti slithered from the pan on to the table,
narrowly missing the plate.

‘Only that she had something important to tell us. Wonder what that means.’ She raised her eyebrows questioningly.

‘He might have proposed,’ replied Wesley, rounding up the rogue strands of spaghetti. If someone wanted to whisk his mother-in-law
off into the sunset, who was he to argue?

DC Steve Carstairs got back to his flat in Morbay at seven, having called for a takeaway pizza on his way home. Still smarting
slightly from Gerry Heffernan’s criticism, he opened the front door and marched into the communal hallway, banging the pizza
box down on the side table. The grease seeping through the box’s base marked the newspaper below, a crisp, unread
Independent
belonging to the frosty young woman in Flat 4. Steve picked the box up quickly and tried to brush the grease away with his
hand. His efforts were useless, but what did it matter? She was a stuck-up bitch anyhow.

He put the pizza box down on the paper again and studied the pigeonholes above the table which held the post for the six flats
in the converted Victorian house. He reached up and pulled two letters from his box. His heart thumped as he scanned the envelopes
for the telltale Manchester postmark. But the promised cheque hadn’t arrived. The old man, so plausible, hadn’t kept his word.
All he had were a couple of irresistible offers; one for a credit card, the other for free access to the Internet. Disgusted,
he threw the envelopes in the bin, where they joined others of their kind.

If Steve had been at all concerned about the environment he would have regretted the unnecessary destruction of the trees
that went to make all this unwanted correspondence. But his only worry was how he was going to live it down at the station.
The man he wanted to be didn’t get taken in by con men – didn’t become a victim.

Rachel Tracey had decided to work late, to catch up on the piles of statements and reports that adorned her desk. Dave had
asked her to go to the pictures but she had put him off. She was too busy, she had said. The truth was that she had not felt
like spending the evening with him. At her mother’s insistence, he was now back staying on her family’s farm – ostensibly
to help out with the holiday flats and then the harvest – and this had made matters worse. There was some truth in the old
saying that absence made the heart grow fonder.

She was increasingly sure that her relationship with Dave had run its course. Now it was just a matter of convincing others
of the fact. And breaking the news to Dave, who still followed her round like an adoring puppy.

The phone on her desk rang and she picked it up. The voice on the other end was unfamiliar, yet she knew she had heard it
recently. Then she realised. It was Charles Pitaway. The man she had rescued from Jacintha Hervey. In spite of her outward
calm, her heart began to beat a little faster.

‘I hoped you might still be here. I just wanted to thank you for rescuing me earlier. You’ve not eaten, have you?’

‘No, but …’

‘Good. I’ll meet you outside the stable block in half an hour. See you then.’

Rachel smiled to herself. This was an unexpected turn of events. For the next half-hour she paced the empty office, paying
frequent visits to the ladies’ to check her appearance and make adjustments to her make-up. She wished she could have changed
into something a bit more special than her working clothes, but if Charles Pitaway wanted to sweep her off her feet straight
from work, he would have to take her as he found her.