Extract from A Stain on the Silence by Andrew Taylor
“Are you sure it’s here?” the sergeant says.
“Yes.” I watch the other man picking his way among the saplings and the stones. “There used to be one further up, but that fell down long before I came here.”
The other man drags away a fallen branch and swears as a bramble sucker rakes its thorns across the back of his hand. He works the blade of the spade under a corner of one of the stones. The stone has been roughly squared. I think it tapers slightly so perhaps it came from the vault or even from the arch over the entrance. He tries to lever it up but it’s too deeply bedded into the tangled roots and impacted rubble. They won’t get far with a single spade. They really need a mechanical digger.
The sergeant cocks an eyebrow at me. He’s at least ten younger than I am but, like so many policemen, he believes himself centuries older in the ways of the world.
“Listen, sir,” he says. “When it comes down to it, we haven’t got a great deal to go on. And it’s a hell of a long time ago.”
“You’ve got the fish necklace.”
“Which you have to agree is a long way from conclusive. There’s no way of telling if it’s the same one.”
Blood near the gate, I think, and the sound of thunder on a fine day? Doesn’t that count for anything?
“We can’t even be sure where it was found. Particularly as one witness is no longer with us, and the other was a kid when it turned up. And why here exactly?” he goes on. “It’s a big place. Could have been anywhere, surely?”
“Because this was special,” I say, as I’ve said many times before to this man and to his colleagues. “This was a secret.”
“If we find nothing, it’s not going to make things look any better. Have you thought of that? And even if we do find something, it’s –”
I sigh. “Nothing’s going to make things look better.”
“No one likes time-wasters, you know.”
“I’m trying to help you. That’s why you brought me here. Haven’t you got a metal detector in the van? That might save time.”
He doesn’t like my telling him what to do. “If you’re right, there’s a hell of a lot of earth and stone on top. Even if there is something worth finding down there, we won’t get a peep out of it.”
The sergeant lights a cigarette – a Marlboro Light, as it happens – and turns away to stare down the slope at the stream. He gets out his phone and moves further away from me. Wood pigeons coo. There are bluebells in the green shade on the opposite bank of the stream. Bluebells mean constancy, Felicity said. Everlasting love. And I hear her voice saying, “I suppose I could always marry you if I had to marry someone.”
A few minutes later, a detective constable appears on the path, carrying the metal detector on her shoulder. I watch the three police officers consult in a huddle among the ruins. The sergeant glances at me. The woman turns on the metal detector. They have the sense to use it near the edge of the stones, where there is almost certainly a thinner layer of debris above the former ground level.
Less than a minute later they have a very sharp signal. The man with the spade comes over. He digs, and the other two try to help by pulling branches and stones out of his way. It’s a warm afternoon and it’s getting hotter in this little valley, despite the trees and the stream. The air isn’t moving.
“I can see something, Sarge,” the woman says, crouching. Her fingers scrabble among the stones. “I think it’s a wheel off a bike.”
A BMX bike. My phone rings. I take it out of my pocket and move away from the sergeant. I know he’s watching me. I glance at the caller display and press one of the keys.