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.’
‘They missed the bloody horse-brass,’ said Miller, with feeling.
‘And they could have kept missing a Saxon hoard,’ said Diamond. ‘A ploughshare doesn’t dig all that deep. There are major finds of gold and silver in fields that have been ploughed for a thousand years.’
‘You’re beginning to sound like a metal detector salesman,’ said Julie.
A high-pitched electronic sound interrupted them.
‘What’s that?’
‘My batphone,’ said Sergeant Miller. He had hung his tunic on the back of the door. He picked off the personal radio and made contact with Manvers Street.
They all heard the voice coming over the static. ‘Message for Mr Diamond. We have a reported sighting of a woman he wants to interview in connection with the Rose Black inquiry. She is called Doreen Jenkins. Repeat Doreen Jenkins. She was seen in Bath this afternoon.’
‘Give me that,’ said Diamond. He spoke into the mouthpiece. ‘Who by?’
‘You’ve pressed the off button, sir,’ said Miller.
He re-established contact. ‘This is DS Diamond. Who was it who saw Doreen Jenkins in Bath?’
‘Miss Ada Shaftsbury. Repeat Ada-’
He tossed it back to Sergeant Miller and said to Julie, ‘Ada. Who else?’
Twenty-six
‘Where?’
‘Rossiter’s,’ said Ada. ‘That big shop in Broad Street with the creaky staircases.’
‘What were you doing in Rossiter’s?’ asked Julie, thinking that Bath’s most elegant department store would have been alien territory for Ada.
‘Looking for the buyer.’
‘You had something to
‘Postcards. Two thousand aerial views of Bath I’m trying to unload. Rossiter’s have all kinds of cards. The ones I’ve got came out kind of fuzzy in the printing, but the colours are great, like an acid trip. A swanky shop like that could sell them as arty pictures, couldn’t they? Anyway, it was worth a try. I went into the card section and I was running an eye over the stock, checking the postcards, when I heard this voice by the till. Some woman was asking if they sold fuses – you know, electrical fuses, them little things you get in plugs? This young assistant was telling her to go to some other shop. Telling her nicely. He was being really polite, giving her directions. I was pottering about in the background, not paying much attention.’
‘Your mind on other things?’ said Diamond, meaning shoplifting.
‘If you want to hear this…’
‘Go on, Ada. What happened?’
‘It was her voice. Sort of familiar, la-de-dah, going on about fuses as if every shop worth tuppence ought to have them.’ She stretched her features into a fair imitation of one of the county set and said in the authentic voice, ‘“But it’s so incredibly boring, having to look for electrical shops.” The penny didn’t drop for me until she was walking out the shop. I went in closer, dying to know if I’d seen her before, and stone me I had, and I still couldn’t place her. You know what it’s like when you suddenly come eye to eye with some sonofagun you’re not expecting.’
