Blood in the Cotswolds (4 page)

But here he was in the sheltered, complacent Cotswolds, where such considerations were completely ignored as if they were a thousand miles away, rather than a mere forty or fifty. Here, the people were more likely to get passionate about long-forgotten saints than about anything as crude as racial tensions. It was restful, he had to admit, but it didn’t strike him as very
real
.

With a quick mental jerk, he caught himself up. Reality existed in these villages just as violently as it did anywhere else. He knew from direct experience that people could kill each
other for reasons that might seem daft or bizarre to the urban criminals of Birmingham, but they ended up with the same miserable consequences for those involved.

But not in Temple Guiting, he assured himself. This little cluster of quaintly pretty dwellings, with its trees and gardens and snaking river, was quietly dreaming its summer away, the birds singing and the lawnmowers buzzing. Dawn sounds wafted through the open window, lulling him into a semi-doze that was almost as good as sleep.

But – surely that couldn’t be a lawnmower? Perhaps it was a milking machine, from some early rising dairy farm or was it possible that someone had made a very prompt start on shearing a large flock of sheep? He listened closely for a minute. If he had to identify the source of the sound, he would have said it must be a chainsaw. A chainsaw before six a.m. seemed as unlikely as a lawnmower – it hinted at a crisis of some kind. A tree fallen onto somebody, perhaps. The road blocked. But why would anybody want to get through at this hour? Janey, he supposed, and her fellow festival-goers. Perhaps St Eevo was the patron saint of
log-fellers, and they had to cut down a tree as part of the ritual. Entirely possible, he concluded with a wry sigh. Just as it was possible that the whole population of the village was surrounding the events in a large circle, hand-in-hand and singing the national song of Finland as the sun rose from behind the hills.

As minutes passed and the sound persisted, Phil was increasingly anxious to know what it was. But he could not call for Thea again, for fear of her anger. So he threw back the duvet and edged his legs onto the floor. The painkillers were still in control, and his legs moved with an encouraging ease. With more difficulty he pulled on some clothes, and then he stood up and walked shakily across to the passageway leading to the front door. It was much better than he had expected. Provided he avoided any jarring to his back, it was perfectly possible to walk normally. An upright posture, with no bends or twists, was virtually painless. He inhaled deeply, and that didn’t hurt either.

Opening the door was harder, because there was a catch at knee-level, for some stupid reason, but he managed it without mishap.

Outside, morning was definitely well under
way. A pinkish light lit the sky and, where the trees caught it, every leaf was outlined sharp and clear. Just the ticket for an atavistic bit of rural festivity, he concluded.

The chainsaw, if that’s what it was, had ceased the instant he stepped outside, but now he could hear shouts and a motor engine revving. It all fitted with his guesses about fallen trees and trapped vehicles. Harder to work out was the exact location of the calamity. It sounded very close – probably only a few yards from where the drive leading to Hector’s Nook parted company with the road running through the village.

He walked slowly and steadily, wishing he could simply teleport himself to the place where the noises were coming from. It was akin to the clogged progress in a dream, everything flowing at the wrong pace, the drama unfolding without him, just around the bend. He wished he had a walking stick to help keep himself straight.

But he got there in the end. The chainsaw started up again, for a few moments, and another motor vehicle arrived. When he finally emerged onto the road, he saw to his left a small group of men, one wearing a hard hat, and a four-wheel-drive emergency services vehicle parked close by.

It was far from clear what had happened. Trees cast long shadows across the road, but there was no sign of any injury or damage. He tried to increase his speed for the last few yards. ‘Anybody hurt?’ he asked, as soon as he was within speaking distance.

A man in fire service uniform glanced at him, and seemed to debate with himself whether to reply. ‘Nothing serious, sir,’ he said. ‘We’re nearly done here now – soon get things back to normal.’

The
sir
was a courtesy; Phil had no expectation that the man could have known who he was. He was wearing a black T-shirt and green shorts, and must have looked the part of a local villager to everybody’s satisfaction.

‘Yes, but what
happened
?’ he persisted.

‘A tree came down, that’s all. A beech – they do that without warning sometimes. A lady reported the road being blocked and urgent traffic needing to get through.’ The man pursed his lips. ‘Turned out to be something of an exaggeration,’ he added. ‘But it’s all finished with now.’

The man in the hard hat looked mutinous, as he listened to this speech. ‘Who’s going to pay
me, that’s what I want to know?’ he growled. ‘Double time for unsocial hours. Three hundred quid, somebody owes me.’

‘Whose land is the tree on?’ Phil asked, incautiously.

‘Don’t you know, sir? Aren’t you local then?’ the fire officer asked sharply.

‘Just staying a few days,’ Phil said. ‘Heard the chainsaw and thought I ought to investigate.’

The officer narrowed his eyes. ‘You don’t look too well, if I may say so. Best get back home and catch up with some sleep. The excitement’s over for the day.’

And Phil quite naturally believed him.

Thea hadn’t stirred when he got back to the house, and he slipped indoors unheard. But the temporary bed held no appeal for him, so he sat stiffly at the kitchen table with a mug of tea planning to wait for her to wake. It was still not quite seven, and already the day was well under way. He felt he’d done more than enough thinking already, so he got up and went on an exploration of the house. His back seemed to be coping well with all the exercise, although it lurked like a troll under a footbridge, just waiting its chance to leap out at him and stab him with a renewed agony. In a small back room, where he had not yet been, there were perhaps fifty stacks of magazines, reaching to waist height. Carefully
stacked, clean and orderly, it was far from clear just what they were. Unlike books, there were no spines to read, but it soon became apparent that they dated back several decades. Unable to bend or lift, all he could do was browse from one stack to another, examining the top magazine on each one. He grew more excited as it became apparent that this was a seriously valuable collection. Country Life, The Lady, Homes and Gardens, Horse and Hound – the theme being rural life throughout the twentieth century. He found copies of Country Life dating back to 1904 in a corner stack, and assumed they went even further into the past if he could only explore properly.

There was a desk and chair in the middle of the room, and he took a magazine almost at random and went to sit with it. His back was throbbing and he had difficulty getting comfortable, but soon he was immersed in the property section of a
Country Life
from 1916. He read every word of every advertisement, the great mansions with a dozen bedrooms or more, offered for sums that wouldn’t buy a beach hut less than a century later. Where were they now, these houses? A few, he supposed, were still
gracing the pages of the same magazine, handled by the same agents. Knight, Frank & Rutley, for example, had survived the intervening years seemingly unchanged. Other familiar names jumped out at him. The Cotswolds featured prominently, then as now, as a place for the rich to live, and he was intrigued to see Temple Guiting Manor, looking very much as he’d seen it the day before, available for rent. He read articles about the War, carefully worded to give no hint of despair or even undue anxiety. Life carried on back home, people bought and sold houses – and a lot of renting out went on, as well, he noted. Families reeling from the loss of their sons, perhaps, suddenly finding the big house too much for them, but loath to sell it outright. It made him think, almost for the first time in his life, of some of the forgotten consequences of such a catastrophic loss of life amongst the land-owning classes as well as the workers.

Thea found him still reading when she came down at eight. ‘Oh, there you are!’ she said, staring round at the room. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Did you know all these were here?’

‘We’re not supposed to touch them. I thought I told you.’

‘But they’re amazing. You should be thrilled – don’t these count as a primary source for historians?’

‘Yes, I suppose they do,’ she said carelessly. ‘Do you want some breakfast?’

Over coffee and toast, Phil told her about the fallen tree and the buzzing chainsaw. ‘Did I dream the bit before that, when the Janey woman turned up?’ he wondered.

‘If you did, I had the same dream.’ She frowned. ‘Seems a bit weird, two things happening before anybody else was up.’

‘I’m assuming Janey called the fire brigade about the tree, which provides a nice tidy connection,’ he said, in a policeman sort of voice. ‘Although rather a coincidence. It wasn’t the least bit windy.’

‘And you walked all the way up the drive?’ Her tone was accusing. ‘With your back?’

‘No, no. I left the back behind on the bed.’

‘Ha, ha. Well, if you’re well enough to do that, you can jolly well come exploring with me today. I don’t want to be cooped up here if I don’t have to.’

‘Which reminds me – isn’t it today you have to feed that snake?’

‘How does that remind you?’

‘I don’t know, quite. Something about coops and cages, I guess.’

‘So, we’ll go for a little walk, OK?’

He sighed. ‘If we can go slowly, I might manage half a mile or so,’ he said grudgingly. ‘But I already feel it’s time for a nap. Do you know who St Eevo is? How do you spell it? What did he do? And
why
?’

‘They choose a different British saint every month, and have a little ceremony to remember him or her. I was looking forward to hearing the story of St Yvo. Y-V-O. Janey said it would be better coming to it fresh and learning about him from their ceremony than if she explained in advance. She was really quite excited about it. I got the feeling it’s her main interest in life.’ Phil clicked his tongue derisively, but Thea merely smiled. ‘I think it’s rather sweet,’ she said. ‘I assumed, obviously, that I’d be here on my own and glad of a diversion when she suggested it. I don’t remember her saying it’d be four in the morning, though.’

‘She probably said sunrise, and you thought it would be about six.’

‘Probably,’ she agreed. ‘Silly me.’

‘I wouldn’t mind going back for another look at that tree later on. We could drive to the top of the lane, to give us a start, and then stroll past on the way into the village. A big old beech it is. They have very shallow roots, you know. Doesn’t take much to fell them, once they reach a certain age. The drought will have had something to do with it, loosening the roots’ hold on the soil. I assumed to start with that it must have been dead, but it had quite a lot of leaves. The branches were across the road. Somebody’s going to have a nice stack of firewood.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘I didn’t know you knew about trees. Shallow roots, eh?’

He refused to be baited. ‘I only know about beeches,’ he said with all due modesty.

He took another painkiller before they set out on their walk, already wondering whether he was being entirely too ambitious. Thea had refused to drive the short length of the lane, on the grounds that it would be a waste of the effort necessary to fold Phil into the passenger seat and out again. He agreed, with growing trepidation, that the walk presented no real difficulty. ‘We
can always turn back if you feel it’s too much,’ she breezed.

When they reached the fallen tree, it looked considerably more dramatic than Phil remembered from his dawn visit that already seemed a long time ago. It had fallen towards Hector’s Nook from the opposite side of the road, plainly causing a total blockage for traffic until the chainsaw man had turned up. Several spreading branches had been sawn away and left strewn across the tussocky field in which the beech had been growing. The road hedge had been wrecked, both by the impact of the tree and the subsequent attentions of the man with the saw. Miss Deacon’s land faced it on the opposite side of the road and a few twigs lay scattered on the verge that side.

‘It must have been very tall,’ Thea remarked, impressed in spite of herself. ‘Poor thing. And there aren’t many leaves. It must have been sick, don’t you think?’

Phil was examining the area of the roots, trying to explain to himself just why it had fallen when it did. ‘I’d guess it must have been a good forty feet high. It was growing on a slope, look,’ he pointed out. ‘It can only have been the sheer
force of gravity that brought it down. Pity we can’t remember what it looked like before. I never even noticed it.’

‘Nor me. You don’t notice individual trees, do you? Not unless they’re really spectacular. How old do you think it was?’

‘Probably less than a century. Seventy or eighty years, maybe. They grow quite quickly, I think.’

They had gone into the field through the crumpled fence, led by Hepzie. ‘Lucky there were no animals in here,’ said Phil. ‘They’d all have escaped.’ He was carefully negotiating the uneven surface, which sloped upwards in one of the classic Cotswold undulations that gave the region its charm. His back was making more of a protest than he chose to admit even to himself.
Distraction
, he muttered.
Think about something
else.

The tree’s roots formed a perfect circle, ripped violently from the earth and seeming to silently shriek at this unnatural exposure to air, as a fish might do. He reached the rim of the shallow crater left behind, a tilted bowl on the side of the slope.

‘Hello,’ he muttered. ‘What’s that then?’

Thea didn’t hear him, until he made a louder wordless cry, and went stiffly down onto his knees into the rumpled orange-yellow earth where the tree had been standing for so long. She looked towards him, from where she was resting against the smooth horizontal tree trunk, and started up in alarm. ‘Phil, what on earth are you doing?’ she shouted. ‘Come out of there.’

He ignored her until she got closer, and then held up his find.

It was a human skull.