“Yes. Basra. You’d do a course on mines, then, that kind of ordnance? In UK?” said Root, thinking that Gary had seen a hell of a lot for a twenty-three year old South Yorkshire lad.
“There wasn’t time. We got rushed out quick. More or less learned on the job. By then it wasn’t mines. No time for detection—they had all the remote control technology they needed from over the border.”
Root shook his head. Someone had been looking for ancient treasure here. What else would they bring a mine detector for? And where would that lead him, Constable Root?
“It’s going to be a messy business,” he said. “It gets a lot of publicity, this sort of thing. Everyone wants in on it. Easy money, they think. Make your fortune with a turn of the spade.”
“Or a buzz from the magic wand. Some people get lucky.”
“He didn’t. Poor sod.”
“So what next?” said Gary.
“Hang about. You’ll be used to that, I expect. Do nowt till you’re told, then just say what you’ve seen, short and clear and maybe we’ll get to the clubhouse before all the crumpets have gone.”
“So what’s happened here, do you think, Arthur?”
“Not for me to say, lad. Nor you. But we’ll find out. We always do.”
A loud voice hailed them. The voice of command. “Anything else, Arthur?” A man of two distinct persuasions, thought Root: lowering and jovial, mercurial and morbid. That was the nature of Major Alfred Wynne-Fitzpatrick, MC and well earned so it was said. This was a man who had commanded a biggish force back in the Falklands campaign; not that he ever spoke of it.
“I don’t want any sightseers, Major!”
“Any what!”
This was not a parade ground, Root told himself. He prodded Gary’s well-muscled shoulder. “Get yourself across again and explain that I respectfully ask the major as Captain of the club to make sure that no one comes out here. Say I said it’s official business. And tell him he’s in charge. Now, off.”
And soon I won’t be, thought Root, for here came the forerunners.
A natty new Ford Focus, bright blue, swished along the newly-asphalted drive, not fast, investigative officers come to establish a presence with no fuss at all: two, no three, for the one in the back was small. Old Owen Burroughs watched the car till it was hidden by the sycamores at the end of the drive.
“This the poliss, is it?”
“Expect so,” said Root. “We’ll just wait and see. All right?”
“I just want out. Skulls aren’t in my job specification, right? I just use heavy tools. Who, for Michael and Mary’s sake did I dig up?”
This was for the experts, thought Root, empathizing.
“Not our worry, Owen.”
Soon, there’d be a CID contingent, an ambulance and the Home Office pathologist and as much and as many of the Support Services as headquarters deemed necessary. Root wondered how the various officials and employees would be coping up at the clubhouse.
Secretary Phil Church would have to handle it. And how would he cope?
Not well at all at first. Right. And who would begin the investigation?
Root thought he knew one shape in the recently arrived police car, a dedicated real-ale fancier called Strapp. He rather hoped that it was Sergeant Strapp he had glimpsed, Izzy Strapp from Welwyn Garden City. South Yorkshire fitted him like an old worn glove, the beer, the barbed and lateral bleak humour of the locals, and the cheap housing.
“A puzzle for you Izzy,” he said aloud. “And me.”
Arthur Root looked again at the marrow-like skull, with its shreds of leathery skin still clinging to the lower jaw. Who were you? he asked. And why here, at Wolvers?
So, at the clubhouse: what?
* * * *
“Oh, bugger,” the pro was saying, hearing his assistant yelling his name. Young Tony Beevers knew quite well where he was and what he was doing. “Sounds important, my love.”
“Bugger too,” said Mrs. Angela Knight, gathering garments. “Anyway, it’s coming on to rain and my hair’s going to be a right mess, you and your big hands, Mick. Can’t say I like the sound of this.” She knew about sudden emergencies, and had had quite enough of them. “This is serious, is it? I mean, the lad knows better than to come here, doesn’t he? What, you off?”
“Back in a second or two.”
“Left alone again,” she said. “Poor little Angie.”
Trouble?
Mick Summers hugged her briefly, then tore out of the thicket that concealed the interior of the folly from a casual inspection, and called back to his assistant,
“Panic over, Tony, I’m here.”
“It isn’t. You’re wanted in the bar, right away. Phil’s there. And some others, all in a stew. Want to know why?”
* * * *
“Couldn’t be worse,” Phil Church was saying, as he waited for those he had summoned or whose presence he had deferentially requested. Better to have them together and give them what news there was, and then keep them together as long as they were willing to stay to see what would break next.
“Bliss!” he called to the steward. “When’s Mick Summers coming? You have told him to get here right away, haven’t you?”
“Done that, Mr. Church. Anything to drink just now?”
“Drink? No, I don’t want anything to drink, do I! Ah, Alice!”
She had no intention of leaving summarily or quickly.
“Let’s be positive, Phil. It may not be murder, but we all like a good mystery, don’t we? And on our doorstep, so to speak.”
“I suppose Arthur Root’s done all the right things, had to be done officially, but God knows I hope they can get all this cleared up soon. We don’t want the place cluttered up with large bobbies’ feet for long, do we?”
“Brought you your gin, Mr. Church,” Charlie Bliss offered, who hadn’t been told to. “Large one. And again for you, Ma’am? Yes? Very well.”
“Yes, get it cleared up,” said Phil Church, cradling the glass. “Today.”
“That’s not the way it’s going to happen.”
CHAPTER 3
“No Phil,” this woman was telling him, with an air of knowledgeable authority. “You can’t wish them away once those big official feet get through the door. You hoped they would pop a few questions and then go away. That’s not how a police investigation works, take my word. They come back again and again.”
“Well, you know how these things work, being on the Bench, I suppose. So what’s to be done? How do we handle the police?”
“Wait. And we don’t. But I rather think the Major will know. Better have a large brandy ready, Phil,” said Alice. “Doesn’t do his gout any good, but it’ll improve his temper. Bliss, this is on me.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” grovelled Bliss, who was very careful to be scrupulously polite to all the lady members. One ill-judged word, and he d behind the bar in some lousy pub down the town. “Balloon glass, of course, Ma’am.”
* * * *
“I’m not hanging around, not me. Not with the police involved. What about Tony? Can he keep his mouth shut, Mick?”
She was in the car park, keys to