Part 17 (2/2)

The boys all referred to the women expedition members only by their first names, as though they knew them personally and were already quite friendly with them. Celebrity was like that. You read about people and studied their pictures often enough and they became as familiar to you as the regulars in your local pub. It was the reason people nodded and smiled at soap stars in the street and the supermarket and then went home wondering why on earth they'd done it.

He personally thought Jane a bit too much the icy blonde for his own taste. She was certainly beautiful, but in so immaculate a way it would make you feel a bit grubby by comparison. He couldn't imagine having s.e.x with her. And the idea of being romantically involved with a psychic, however physically alluring, seemed to him a completely outrageous prospect. Alice was a trained psychiatrist too. Talk about inviting trouble. Anyway it was Napier's privately held opinion that the Chronicle's own Lucy Church was hotter than either of them.

He'd met Lucy once. He hoped she wouldn't remember. She'd been embedded for a month at their forward base in Afghanistan. She'd been gutsy and no-nonsense and she'd had a store of filthy jokes. He'd taken her out on patrol. She'd even looked good in combat fatigues and a Kevlar blast vest. He hoped she wouldn't remember because despite the regard in which Alexander McIntyre now held him, he'd fallen an awfully long way in his own estimation since those days.

The choppers came in with their usual s.h.i.+t-storm of downdraft. Two photographers scrambled out of the hatch of the first to land and took pictures for the following morning's paper of the experts disembarking. They huddled on the gra.s.s in their foul-weather overalls with McIntyre's company logos plastered onto their backs and chests and sleeves.

He was relieved to see that the women looked as lovely in life as they did in their pictures. Lucy stood, almost protectively, beside Jane. Alice actually looked more in need of rea.s.surance than Jane did, pale and visibly apprehensive.

Kale looked more like a wrestler than an archaeologist, with his brawny build and beard and abundant mane tied back in a ponytail. Cooper looked like he'd rather be wearing a tuxedo. The swarthy exorcist ostentatiously knelt and kissed the ground. There was a grim-faced, shaken seeming bloke in gla.s.ses Napier a.s.sumed was a staffer from the Chronicle. And there was a tough-looking sallow faced man, tall and in good shape, he recognised as the ex-detective, La.s.siter. He saw La.s.siter wink at Alice and Alice smile back at him, obviously grateful for the gesture in spite of her nerves.

It was lazy and sometimes even dangerous to generalise. But Patrick La.s.siter did not look very much like the drunks Napier had encountered in life. Preoccupied by the thought of their next drink, in his experience they always had in common a sort of willing insularity. La.s.siter was alert and empathetic. He was physically fit and fully engaged in the moment. Napier's first impression was that this was a man who would make a good ally and a formidable enemy.

Lucy strode over, grinning and holding out her hand and Napier thought so much for remaining incognito. Behind her, a crew from the second chopper began unloading the experts' gear. He nodded to Davis, the signal for Davis to show the new arrivals around their living quarters and field laboratory and communications centre.

'Colour Sergeant Paul Napier,' Lucy said.

'Don't tell me. You never forget a face.'

'Not a face as handsome as yours.'

He smiled and said, 'You've already told me the one about the actress, the bishop and the egg-timer.'

She reached into a pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and proffered it.

'I've given up.'

'Me too,' she said, extracting one from the pack with her teeth and lighting it with the nickel plated Zippo he remembered from Afghanistan. 'What're you doing here?'

'We're protecting your exclusive, predominantly.'

She lifted her head and blew out smoke and said, 'A dangerous a.s.signment?'

'One casualty so far, missing, presumed dead.'

'Blake,' she said, 'the former marine who walked into the sea.'

'That's a plausible theory.'

She looked away from him, around at the island, bright and vivid and windswept in the suns.h.i.+ne, heather and granite and s.h.i.+ngle and scrub. A vast sky above them, clouds s.h.i.+fting so fast they seemed to be fleeing it. 'Hostile territory, would you say?'

'I would,' he said. 'Very.' Over by the nearest chopper, Kale was supervising the unloading of what looked to Napier like a portable gym.

'You can elucidate when I've unpacked,' Lucy said.

'It might not sound very lucid,' Napier said.

She pinched out her smoke and flicked the b.u.t.t onto the ground and turned away and said in her own wake, 'My place at six.'

She really did ride a bicycle. It had a basket attached to the handlebars. She was a tall, slender woman who looked younger than retirement age. She had gray hair and clear blue eyes and there was a notebook, Fortescue saw, in the basket. He took this to be an encouraging sign. The reverend made the introductions and then left them and he sat with Emma Foot on a bench in the churchyard and he asked her about Doctor Garland.

'He was a compa.s.sionate man. He had a reputation for kindness,' she said.

'Why did you research him?'

'I didn't, directly. Do you know much about Barnsley's history, Professor Fortescue?'

'I know that its principle industries were gla.s.s manufacture and the mining of coal. I know that the town suffered economic hards.h.i.+p in the 1980s, in the Thatcher era.'

'In common with most of the north of England,' Emma Foot said.

'How did you come across Garland?'

'We're in the middle of the South Yorks.h.i.+re coalfield. We're sitting right on top of the Barnsley Seam. Mining was the principle industry here at the time of Garland's arrival. I came across him while examining the history of the Elsinore Pit.'

'He was a physician and his professional experience was gained as a s.h.i.+p's doctor. What did he do, buy shares in a mine?'

Emma Foot smiled. 'Mining was very dangerous, in those days. Methane gas poisoned the miners. Sometimes it built up and the flames from their candles and lamps ignited it and it exploded and they burned. Tunnels collapsed causing crush injuries. Breathing in coal dust triggered chronic bronchitis and emphysema.' She stood. 'Come with me. I want to show you something.'

They went into the church and progressed along the knave. It was cool and very quiet. Suns.h.i.+ne was strong through the stained gla.s.s of the windows, making them glitter and glow in lozenges of coloured light cast onto the stone floor. She pointed to a small window, quite high up and narrower than the rest. The figure of a man was depicted in gla.s.s shapes between the lattices of lead. He wore britches and a cutaway coat and pointed with one hand towards the sky as if to symbolise hope or salvation.

'I think that's him,' Emma Foot said. 'There's some evidence the money used to pay for that window was raised by public subscription. So I'm a.s.suming, adding two and two together to make four, if you will. But I would safely bet it's him.'

'Garland treated the miners,' Fortescue said, thinking that if his brain turned any slower it would const.i.tute atrophy.

'And he did so for nothing. They were little better than slaves, back in those days, Professor. No unions, no compensation, no sick pay. 18 hour s.h.i.+fts, often without a break. Many of them were children, by any definition. They worked for very low wages, the miners. And Garland treated those who worked at the Elsinore Pit and he did so free of charge.'

Fortescue looked up at the window. 'How would they afford to commission the stained gla.s.s?'

'When Garland came here, at the turn of the century, there was an economic depression. Mining was much more prosperous an industry by the time of his death. Working conditions didn't change, but wages improved. They were honourable people who would have wanted to show their grat.i.tude.'

Coal; the Barnsley Seam, The Recruited Collier, it was all of a pattern and a piece. The song he'd taught Edith wasn't just a clue, it was Jacob Parr's mischievous, posthumous jest. Fortescue was beginning to see to were this led. It didn't lead to a churchyard grave, though the place it did lead to had no doubt been a makes.h.i.+ft grave for some. He said, 'The Elsinore Pit's played out?'

'It was exhausted a hundred years ago.'

'How many shafts were there?'

'Three were sunk.'

'Were any of them sealed in the lifetime of Thomas Garland?'

'The first of them was. That was the south shaft. It played out in 1808,' she said.

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