Peter Lovesey - Upon A Dark Night

‘Just as long as you haven’t vacuumed the interior recently.’

‘You’re joking. I have more important things to do.’

He asked Julie to drive him out to the farm to check the mobile operational office, or so he claimed. She suspected he wanted to try out his new toy.

The van was parked in the yard and manned by DS Miller and DC Hodge, the only woman of her rank on the squad. They were discovered diligently studying a large-scale Ordnance Survey map, no doubt after being tipped off by Manvers Street that Diamond was imminent. What were telecommunications for, if not to keep track of the boss?

When asked what they were doing they said checking the locations of nearby farms. Someone had already called at the immediate neighbour and spoken to a farmhand called Bickerstaff who was the only person present. He had confirmed that the owners were a company known as Hollandia Holdings, based in Bristol. Bickerstaff and his ‘gaffer’, a man from Marshfield, the next village, worked the land for the owners. It was a low-maintenance farm, with a flock of sheep, some fields rented out to the ‘horsiculture’- the riding fraternity – and some set-aside. Bickerstaff had heard about old Gladstone’s death and was sorry his body had lain undiscovered for so long, but expressed the view that local people couldn’t be blamed. Gladstone had long been known as an ‘awkward old cuss’ who didn’t welcome visitors.

‘Have you got a fire going in the house?’ Diamond asked Miller.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good. I’m going in there to put on my wellies.’

Julie and the sergeant exchanged glances and said nothing. He was back in a short time shod in green gumboots and carrying a T-shaped metal detector with what looked like a pair of vanity cases mounted at either end of the metre-length crosspiece. ‘You’ll want a spade, Sergeant.’

‘Will I, sir?’

‘To dig up the finds.’

‘Old coins and stuff?’

‘No, this super-charged gizmo is too powerful for coins unless they’re in a pot, a mass of them together. It ignores small objects. I’m after bigger things. It works at quite some depth, which is why you need the spade. Julie, there’s a ball of string in the car with some skewers. You and the constable can line and pin the search area. We don’t want to go over the same bit twice. Follow me.’ He clamped a pair of headphones over his ears and strode towards the edge of the field. Clearly he had spent some time studying the handbook that came with the two-box.

‘What does he expect to find?’ Cathy Hodge asked Julie. ‘Treasure, I think,’ said Julie, ‘if there’s any left.’

‘Has someone else been by?’

‘Get with it, Cathy. You must have seen the evidence of recent digging. We don’t know how thorough they were, or how much of the ground they covered.’

Diamond was already probing the field with the detector, treading an unerring line towards the far side. Julie sank a skewer into the turf, attached some string and started after him. ‘Put more skewers in at two-foot intervals,’ she called back to Hodge.

They completed about six shuttles of the field before something below ground must have made an interesting sound in Diamond’s ear-phones. He stopped and summoned Sergeant Miller, who at this stage was watching the performance from the comfort of the drystone wall. ‘I don’t know how deep it is, but I’m getting a faint signal. Get to it, man.’ Then, with the zest of a seasoned detectorist, he moved on with the two-box in pursuit of more finds.

Julie was beginning to tire of the game. She wasn’t wearing boots and the mud was spattering her legs as well as coating a passable pair of shoes. ‘Your turn with the string,’ she told young Hodge.

‘Ma’am, you said we don’t know how much of the ground was searched by whoever did that digging.’

‘Yes?’

‘I just thought I ought to tell you that someone has marked this up before. If you look along here, there’s a row of holes already.’

Julie saw for herself, circular holes in the earth at intervals of perhaps a metre, along the length of the hedge.

‘Should we tell Mr Diamond?’ Hodge asked. ‘I mean, he could be wasting his time.’

‘Tell him if you’re feeling strong,’ said Julie. ‘I’m not.’

On consideration, nothing was said at that stage. Julie strolled over to the farmhouse, removed her shoes, went inside, filled a kettle and put it on the hotplate. A reasonable heat was coming up from a wood fire. There was a teapot on the table, with a carton of milk and some teabags and biscuits. The two on duty had wasted no time in providing for creature comforts. She found a chair – not the armchair – and sat with her damp feet as near the iron bars of the fire as possible.

She had always lived in modern houses, so the cottage range was outside her experience. She saw how it was a combination of boiler, cooking fire and bread oven. A great boon in its time, no doubt, with everything positioned so neatly around and over the source of heat: hot plate rack, swing iron for the meat, dampers and flue doors set into the tiled back. This one must have been fitted some time in the nineteenth century; the farmhouse was two or three hundred years older. Earlier generations would have cooked in the open hearth where the range now stood. She reckoned from the width of the mantelpiece over the hearth that in those days the fireplace must have stretched a yard more on either side. The ‘built-in’ range had been installed and the spaces filled in. It was obvious where the joins were.

Presently she got up and tapped the wall to the right of the oven and had the satisfaction of a hollow sound. An early example of the fitted kitchen unit. The water was simmering, the kettle singing in the soothing way that only old-fashioned kettles in old cottages do. She went back to the door and looked out. They hadn’t finished, but the light was going. Sergeant Miller was hip-deep in the pit he had dug, a mound of soil beside him.

She went to look for more cups.

When they came in, Diamond looked in a better mood than was justified by the treasure-hunt. ‘Tea? That’s good organisation, Julie. It’s getting chilly out there.’

‘No luck?’

‘Depends what you mean by luck. We didn’t find you a Saxon necklace, if that’s what you hoped for.’

‘I wasn’t counting on it.’

‘But Sergeant Miller dug up a horse-brass.’

‘Oh, thanks.’

‘Finally,’ said Miller as he slumped into the chair.

‘It proves that the two-box works. And it also tells us that there ain’t no Saxon treasure left in the ground.’

‘Do you think any was found where the digging took place?’

‘Don’t know. My guess is that they used a two-box just as I did and got some signals. They could have found a bag of gold, or King Alfred’s crown – or more horse-brasses.’

Julie poured the tea and handed it around. ‘Just because a sword was found here fifty years ago, is it really likely that anything else would turn up?’

‘You do ask difficult questions, Julie. I’m no archaeologist. Let’s put it this way. I understand that people in past centuries buried precious objects like the Tormarton Seax for two reasons: either as part of the owner’s funeral or for security. A grave or a hoard. Whichever, it’s more than likely that other objects would be buried with them. So there’s a better chance here than in some field where nothing has turned up.’

‘Don’t you think old Gladstone, or his father before him, would have searched his own land?’

‘I’d put money on it, Julie, but let’s remember that metal detectors weren’t around in 1943, not for ordinary people to play with. They started going on sale in the late sixties. By that time the Gladstones must have dug most of their land many times over and decided nothing else was under there.’