The Lost Shrine Read online

  Blowing out her cheeks, she tried to focus on the task in hand. The hole in front of her looked like some kind of shallow pit, but the soil in it was loose, offering no resistance to her trowel. And mixed into it were small lumps of limestone – just like the surrounding bedrock. She was nearly at the bottom now and it was obvious that there was absolutely nothing in it.

  She rocked back on her heels. ‘Have you had any finds out of it?’

  Malcolm pointed to the small plastic tray that sat on the side of the trench. ‘Just that.’ In the tray was a small, nondescript piece of blue plastic.

  ‘Where did it come from?’

  ‘About halfway up the fill.’

  No chance it had found its way there accidentally then. Clare stood up and stretched her back.

  ‘Thanks, Malcolm. Just finish recording it and then go and give Steve a hand over on his cutting.’

  She clambered out of the trench and made her way disconsolately back towards the Portakabin. Malcolm’s was the third pit like this that they’d found so far. With absolutely no sign of finds except some modern tat and looking for all the world as if they had been dug yesterday. Which she suspected was uncomfortably close to the truth. Why could things never be simple? As if Paul Marshall wasn’t enough to cope with, now it looked as if someone had been messing about with the site before they’d taken it over. What sort of messing about she couldn’t prove for sure, but she had a damn good idea.

  When she got to the office, she found Neil already there, poring over a folder full of context sheets.

  He looked up. ‘You look like you could do with a brew.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say no.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  She plonked herself down at her desk. ‘We’ve now got three of those bloody pits.’

  ‘Empty?’

  ‘Not quite, unfortunately. This one had modern plastic in it.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Ah indeed.’

  ‘I did say Beth didn’t miss much.’

  She nodded in the direction of the sheaf of context sheets he held in his hands. ‘I know, and there’s nothing in the records to show that she’d spotted any of them before she’ – Clare hesitated, groping for the right words – ‘finished on-site.’

  Neil shook his head. ‘No. I did check.’

  ‘So did I.’

  If there was no record of the pits being there when the site had been closed down, they must have been dug and then backfilled since. Which meant it looked like they’d had illegal metal detectorists on the site. Or, as they were rather too glamorously known in the trade, nighthawks. In reality the people who dealt in such things were anything but glamorous.

  Neil sighed. ‘Well, there’s nothing much we can do about it now.’

  ‘Not about the damage that’s already been done, maybe, but we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’

  ‘You don’t want to start messing with nighthawks, Clare. They’re a nasty bunch of fuckers.’ Then, suddenly seeming to think better of his choice of language, he added, ‘Sorry.’

  Clare wasn’t sure why but somewhere along the line Neil seemed to have gained the impression that she was what her mum would call ‘posh’. It was true that life as a solicitor’s wife had polished away her last remaining Essex comp vowels. But deep down inside there was still more than a touch of the girl from the council estate. A fact that, though she rarely shared it, she was secretly rather proud of.

  She waved his apology away and smiled. ‘It’s alright, I happen to think your choice of language is spot on. And I have absolutely no intention of trying to take them on single-handed.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that. I was on a Roman site over in the Forest of Dean a few years back when one of my mates nipped back to site one night to pick up some kit he’d forgotten. He got beaten to a pulp with a pickaxe handle by the bastards.’

  ‘You’re not making me feel any better about this, Neil.’

  ‘Tell you what, I’ll go and make you that cuppa.’

  Once he’d left the office and was out of earshot, Clare retrieved her mobile from the pocket of her combat trousers. Scrolling through her contacts, she found the number she was looking for. She thought she was going to be out of luck, but just as she was about to ring off a male voice answered. ‘Mark Stone.’

  ‘DCI Stone.’ She stumbled over her words, momentarily uncertain of how she should address him. ‘Mark. It’s Clare Hills – from the Bailsgrove dig site.’

  ‘Yes, I remember. What can I do for you, Clare?’

  Was it her imagination or did he seem somewhat cheerier than she imagined the average police officer sounded? Sally would have you believe they were being run ragged most of the time and barely had time to deal with serious crime, let alone take random phone calls from a virtual stranger. Well, if he was in a good mood, the least she could do was take advantage of it. ‘I was wondering when you had the dig site sealed off if there had been any sort of unusual activity.’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of.’ He sounded more cautious now. ‘Why, have you had some sort of problem?’

  ‘You could say that. There seems to have been some illegal metal detecting on-site between the time Beth stopped digging and when we took over. There’s no way of knowing exactly what they’ve taken, but of course that’s not the most important thing – they’ve wrecked a large area of the site.’

  She was sure she could hear him sighing on the other end of the phone. ‘I’m really sorry to hear that, but there’s not much we can do. After all, you said yourself that there’s no way of knowing what’s been taken.’

  ‘But they must have done this while you had the site sealed off. I don’t understand how it could have happened.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m not exactly sure “sealed off” is the right way to put it. It was an unexplained death, not a murder enquiry. As soon as we’d had SOCO out there and they’d done their bit we locked the place up and left site.’

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘You mean you just left it? With no one there to protect it?’

  ‘Look, I know the site is important to you, Mrs Hills, but nothing much has come from it, has it? Not as far as we could make out from what the dig team said when we arrived.’

  ‘Well, no, not yet maybe. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need protecting – who’s to say what we might find.’

  There was no mistaking it; this time Clare could hear an audible sigh on the other end of the line. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Mrs Hills, but it’s not a legally protected monument, is it?’

  ‘No, that’s true, it’s not Scheduled. But that doesn’t mean it might not be important. And if it does prove to be as significant as Dr Kinsella thought it was it could be Scheduled in the future.’ Even to her ears she was beginning to sound desperate.

  ‘I wish you every success with your dig, Mrs Hills, I really do, but I’m afraid our resources don’t stretch to protecting every last patch of earth in Gloucestershire. If you have any trouble – any threats, any actual evidence of theft by metal detectorists or anyone else – then do get in touch with us.’ And with that the line went dead.

  Clare closed her eyes and turned her face towards the early summer sunshine. After her failure to get Gloucestershire’s finest to take the destruction of chunks of the site seriously, she’d decided to award herself an end-of-shift glass of Sancerre. To her surprise and relief she’d found that she was the only person taking advantage of the King’s Arms’ beer garden.

  She rubbed at the back of her neck. The last few weeks had taken more out of her than she’d realised. She hadn’t appreciated how much of a strain the responsibility of being a site director would prove. It was one thing to stand in for a day or two when David wasn’t around, but having to sort out everything from hiring the JCB to making sure there was enough toilet roll in the Portaloo was quite another.

  Still, on the plus side, she hadn’t had much time to think. And avoiding thinking was something she’d become par
ticularly adept at since Stephen’s death. It had only been just over two years since his car crash. But her life today was unrecognisable now from the way things had been before his death. She sometimes wondered what he’d make of her if he met her now. Looking down at her mud-splattered moleskin trousers and scuffed steel toe capped boots, she suspected he wouldn’t have approved. She was about as far away from the image of the immaculately groomed wife of a successful solicitor as it was possible to imagine.

  She ran her fingers through her hair and took a swig – Stephen would have thought rather too large a swig – of her wine. Well, he’d left her with no choice, hadn’t he? It was Stephen who’d managed to pour virtually every penny they’d possessed into what his friend and colleague James – his executor – had described as ‘ill-judged’ property deals without even bothering to mention it to her. The only visible means of support he’d left her with had been a tiny photographic gallery in Richmond.

  She’d always loved photography. She was beguiled by the potential that a camera held to capture the essence of a moment, or the memory of a place. Stephen had presented her with the shop out of the blue as a present for their tenth anniversary. But as grateful as she’d been at the time, it had always been more of a self-indulgent hobby than a viable business. When he’d given it to her she’d felt guilty because she’d found herself wondering whether his gift had been his way of acknowledging that there was something missing in her life – in their marriage – that neither of them had been able to bring themselves to discuss.

  Whatever his motivation, she was grateful that he’d had the foresight to put it in her name. It was all she’d had left to fall back on after his death. So when David had offered her a job she’d jumped at the chance.

  The trouble was, if she was being honest with herself, most of the time she was happier now than she could ever remember having been with Stephen. Not that she hadn’t loved him; she had. And she had no doubt at all that he’d loved her. But that hadn’t been quite enough. And despite the odd moment of self-doubt, since she’d accepted David’s offer she hadn’t had a moment’s regret. But now she could never quite escape the feeling that part of the reason for Stephen’s ‘accident’ was that he’d known all along that there had been something missing.

  Her thoughts turned back to the present and her conversation with Mark Stone. She’d been annoyed, maybe even a little angry, that he was less than interested in the site being a target for nighthawks. But her overwhelming feeling when she’d heard the line go dead was one of disappointment. Not with his casual disregard for the nation’s heritage, but that he’d called her Mrs Hills. And for some reason that she wasn’t sure she was ready to delve into just yet, she’d had an overwhelming urge to let him know that there was no longer a Mr Hills.

  ‘Don’t bother, I’ll find her myself.’ The shrill female voice punctured the early afternoon tranquillity.

  Clare finished pushing the small plastic label into the side of the trench and looked up. The voice had come from the direction of the welfare unit. She straightened up from where she’d been squatting to see a woman of later middle years, clad in a Barbour and wide-brimmed hat, striding purposefully towards her. Clare had stayed on-site to finish marking up the section when everyone else had gone for tea, so that Neil could head down into Gloucester to buy some drafting film. It had been a long, hot and decidedly unproductive day and she’d been looking forward to a mug of what laughingly passed for tea. But judging from the expression on the woman’s face it didn’t look likely she was going to get one any time soon. Reluctantly she climbed out of the trench and pinned what she fervently hoped was a directorial smile in place.

  The woman waved a hand in the direction of the Portakabins. ‘They tell me you’re in charge here.’ Clare glanced over to see Jo standing in front of the site huts with her arms spread wide in a gesture of silent apology. Clare opened her mouth to reply but didn’t get the chance. ‘It’s an utter disgrace. You should be ashamed of yourself.’

  Clare could feel her cheeks reddening. She had no idea who this woman was, much less what it was she was supposed to have done. She took in a deep breath and stuck out a hand in what she trusted would be construed as a friendly gesture.

  ‘I’m Clare Hills, the dig director. And you would be …’

  ‘Foggarty, Mrs Sheila Foggarty. Parish councillor. And I want to know what you think you’re doing opening this site up again.’

  ‘I’m doing my job, Mrs Foggarty. Our team are excavating here to ensure the site is properly explored and recorded ahead of the housing development.’

  ‘Exactly! After all the effort poor Beth went to. She knew that this site was too important to build on.’

  ‘I know that Beth believed this site may have been significant in the Iron Age, but I’m afraid so far we’ve found remarkably little evidence to back up her claims.’

  ‘How much is Paul Marshall paying you?’

  ‘I really don’t think that’s any of your business, Mrs Foggarty.’

  ‘I think it’s very much the business of a parish councillor to know if so-called archaeologists are taking backhanders from developers to keep quiet about what they’ve found in my parish.’

  Clare couldn’t contain herself any longer. ‘Now, look here. I can see you’re very upset, but whatever you might like to believe we’re a perfectly respectable archaeology unit. And we’re doing our best to do a professional job under difficult circumstances.’

  Sheila Foggarty clearly didn’t share Clare’s appraisal of the situation. ‘Then why are you working for a cowboy like Paul Marshall, whose only desire is to profit from the destruction of our countryside?’

  ‘Beth worked for Paul Marshall too, Mrs Foggarty.’

  ‘Yes, but she was only doing it to protect the site. To show everyone that it was too important to build on.’

  Clare was tempted to say that if that was true, Beth had entirely failed in her mission, but she knew that would only make matters worse. ‘The Hart Archaeological Research Institute is part of the University of Salisbury – our very reason for existing is to discover and investigate important archaeological sites. What makes you so sure we don’t want to do our best by the archaeology and by Beth Kinsella? If Beth was right and this place really is some sort of Iron Age shrine, we will find out.’

  For a moment Sheila Foggarty stood staring at her, hands rammed into the pockets of her Barbour, as if considering something. ‘Well, if that’s the case you might be interested in this.’ She retrieved a folded sheet of A4 paper from the pocket of her jacket and shoved it at Clare.

  Clare took the paper without a word and studied it, trying to make sense of what she was looking at. It was a printout of a lot from an online auction site. It showed a photograph of what it claimed was an Iron Age sword. She was no expert on Celtic weaponry, but it looked fairly convincing from what she remembered from textbooks and museums. If it was a fake someone had done a halfway decent job. She glanced down at the description. It said it came from a nineteenth-century collection of material from in and around the area of Bailsgrove in Gloucestershire. It didn’t prove that Bailsgrove had been a shrine of any kind, but she knew that if it had really come from somewhere in Bailsgrove it would certainly add weight to Beth’s theory.

  She looked up. ‘You realise that this might not be real. It’s not uncommon for dealers to give a false provenance to fake artefacts to lure customers in.’

  ‘Does it look fake to you, Mrs Hills?’

  ‘Well, on first appearances it does look about right but it’s impossible to tell without seeing it in the flesh. But even if it is what it claims to be, it’s not necessarily from Bailsgrove. And I’m sorry to say that one sword doesn’t make a shrine.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not the only one. There’s plenty of other material on the same website that comes from Bailsgrove.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, Mrs Foggarty, but I’m afraid that on its own this doesn’t prove anything.’

  ‘So much
for safeguarding the nation’s heritage. If you had any interest at all in protecting this site you’d want to find out more about this.’ Snatching the paper out of Clare’s hand, she turned and marched back in the direction of the site entrance. As she strode towards the gate she half turned and waved the sheet in Clare’s direction. ‘And don’t think I won’t write to the vice chancellor about your attitude, young woman. It’s shameful, truly shameful.’

  David swung the Land Rover in through the field gate, narrowly missing the woman in the waxed jacket. Stopping, he flung open his door, turning towards her to apologise, but she’d already stormed past him shaking her head and muttering, ‘Appalling. Simply appalling.’

  He could swear he’d heard her say something about contacting the vice chancellor. What the hell was going on? He’d driven up from Salisbury in the hope of a few hours’ respite from the Runt, who seemed to be positively revelling in the financial straits in which the Hart Unit currently found itself. Anyone would think that he wanted them to fail – and of course they’d be right. Nothing would please the little shit more than being able to present the dean with an excuse to eject David from the department.

  ‘Hi, David. Fancy a brew?’

  Clare sounded distinctly fed up, and she looked knackered as she trudged downslope towards him. He hoped he wasn’t going to live to regret putting her in sole charge of the excavations. He knew that technically she was perfectly capable – if truth be told, he sometimes thought more capable than he was – of directing her own dig. But it looked as if the added knowledge that, unless this excavation went to plan, the unit would have to close was weighing on her more heavily than he’d expected.