To Dream of the Dead

Jane opened it up. The Daily Star was unlikely to be Coops’s usual choice.

But then, it wouldn’t usually carry a picture on its front page of someone as old and boring as the late Clement Ayling under…

HEADHUNTERS!

Town hall boss

topped by

pagan nutters

It was as though a fist had come through the paper, smacked her full in the face. Jane stepped back into a puddle.

‘It was the only one left on the rack at your local shop,’ Coops said. ‘But I gather the others are similar.’

She read the whole story, which wasn’t long. The police were quoted as saying that fragments of stone found ‘with the head’ had been confirmed as coming from the Dinedor Serpent, ‘an ancient path which local pagans say is sacred’. But which Clem Ayling, whose body had now been found in the River Wye, had dismissed as ‘patio gravel’. As a result of which, he and his council had been attacked by ‘pagan groups’ and ‘top TV archaeologist Bill Blore’.

‘Oh.’ Jane stepped out of the puddle and handed the paper back to Coops. ‘So now they all want him.’

For one agonising moment she’d thought the headline meant the cops had been acting on stuff from the Coleman’s Meadow database. But, of course, it would’ve been impossible for any of that to make this morning’s papers.

‘Fame rules,’ Coops said.

‘Did you know about these fragments of stone, Coops?’

‘Not a thing. If the police consulted my boss, he hasn’t told me about it.’

‘But like, even if it’s true, how can the cops just say it’s down to pagans? I mean, how dare they—?’

‘They probably didn’t. They just let the press run with it. Most of the others seem to have been a bit more restrained than the Star.’

‘Where’s Bill Blore now?’

‘Somewhere wishing he’d kept his famous gob shut.’ Coops didn’t look entirely displeased about Blore being caught on the back foot. ‘Shut himself in the site caravan to phone a friend. Always assuming he has one left.’

Jane pondered the implications, looking at her watch. Six minutes to ten.

‘Coops, is this going to affect my interview?’

‘He’s pretty pissed off, Jane. Been here since before eight. Wanted to make a good start while the rain was holding off, and now he can’t. He’s actually—’

Jane heard a few ragged cheers. Coops moved around the oak tree, went to peer over what was left of Lyndon Pierce’s barbed-wire fence. Came back yawning.

‘Looks like he’s coming out. Like some bloody racing driver with his support crew.’

‘Can we watch?’

‘If we must. But look, Jane, when he gets rid of this lot I’d keep away from him for a while if I were you. Don’t push. Let him decide when to remember you.’

‘By which time it’ll be raining again.’

‘Yeah, probably.’

‘And I’ll look like shit.’

Jane looked around for something to kick.

Bill Blore didn’t actually come off the site, went no further than the gate. Leaning over its top rail, wide shoulders hunched under a scratched leather bomber jacket. His thick hair was bound back by some kind of bandanna, his eyes still and steely like ball-bearings, his voice… big.

‘All right, you bastards.’

When he raised a hand it was clenched around a flat-bladed trowel, edged with red mud, like he’d been interrupted in the middle of his work.

Laughter from the hacks, and the stills photographers began taking pictures. The security guy, Gregory, and an older guy with the same armband were standing at either end of the metal gate. Jane was with Coops, hanging back, well out of shot as a rising wind rattled the gate and Bill Blore tapped the top rail with the handle of the trowel.

‘OK, hacks, here’s the situation. I’m happy to talk to you, but I really don’t have time for individual interviews, or we’ll be here all fucking day. So you’re just going to have to… you know… gather round, throw the shit at me and I’ll bat it back. Five minutes max, OK?’

‘Some of us’ve come a long way, Bill,’ someone moaned, but Bill Blore wiped it away with both hands and his big voice.

‘Not trying to be difficult, whoever you are, but I’ve got a job to do and it’s rather more important to me than whichever fucking lunatics took an axe to some poor old bugger from the local authority.’ Pointing with the trowel at a raised hand. ‘OK, go…’

‘Susannah Gilmore, Sky News. Presumably you’ve seen today’s papers, Bill?’

‘Gave up reading comics when I turned ten, Susannah, but I’ve been given a digest, yeah, so I can just about put together a reason for you vultures swooping.’

‘Can we get directly to the point, then?’ one of the other TV guys said, and Blore bowed and spread his hands. ‘Professor Blore, first of all, if you can give us your reaction to the suggestion that County Councillor Ayling was actually murdered because of his negative attitude towards the so-called Dinedor Serpent.’

‘Well, that’s not my…’ Bill Blore looked down at the trowel, puffed out his lips, looked up again. ‘All right. Here we go.’

A few seconds of silence. All you could hear was the slap of one of the nylon tent flaps and some cameras going off. Two uniformed cops looked at people’s faces.

Bill Blore took a breath.

‘Archaeology’s my life. But I couldn’t say it’s worth the loss of someone else’s.’ He paused. ‘So if you’re saying did I do it…?’ Bill Blore looked down at the media, the wind lifting his hair. Photographers were snapping him from below and Jane saw that one of them was Lensi, her red hair glowing against the grey sky.

The TV guy said, ‘So who would you—?’

‘Oh, come on, what am I supposed to say to that? Kind of people who’d do this? Not the foggiest. If you’re asking me about pagans, yeah, I’ve met plenty of them. Always find them hanging around prehistoric sites. Ask me a couple of days ago, I’d’ve said they were just bloody comics. Harmless. Didn’t think they also included total bloody maniacs. Shows how wrong you can be. Next.’

Two questions collided.

‘When you say you’ve met plenty—’

‘—Yourself had some pretty hard things to say about the Herefordshire Council—’

‘True. And I don’t take any of it back. I do think local authorities should be better informed about the dangers of destroying our heritage with hastily planned developments. I do indeed wish that bloody road was going somewhere else. And if the late Councillor Ayling had kept quiet about the Dinedor Serpent then so would I. But… we all have a right to free speech. Without, I might add, facing summary execution.’

The Sky News woman said, ‘Bill, you said a moment ago that you’d met plenty of the sort of people who you think might be responsible for the murder of Councillor Ayling. Would you care to—?’

‘I did not say that, you… I said that I’d encountered some people I thought were comics… rather than killers. But this — as all of you guys should know — is a rapidly changing world. World that’s daily becoming more brutalised. Suicide bombers, children shooting other children on the streets, torturing old ladies… Is it any great surprise to me when some second-generation neo-hippies out of their heads on methamphetamine start chopping people’s heads off because they think their noble Neolithic ancestors have been disrespected? I mean, do