Two skeletons. One inside the coffin, and one outside. One small, one big. One gray and yellow, one cloud-white.
What to do? Somebody should take a look at it, that was fairly certain. Though that would take a long time. They would dig with tiny trowels; Bogdan had seen it on TV. And they wouldn’t just be digging into this grave; they would be digging into all of them. And Bogdan knows it will end up being nothing. It will just be how they used to bury people in this country, or one year there was a disease and they buried people together, or a million other possibilities. Meanwhile the development will be delayed and he will be waiting to work. So, the question remains. What to do?
Bogdan needs thinking time. But unfortunately he doesn’t have that luxury. In the distance he hears a siren. He waits a moment and the siren comes closer. It sounds like an ambulance to Bogdan, but he knows, logically, that itmust be the police. Which means the barricade will be clear soon enough and the circus will begin. He hauls himself out of the grave and starts to fill it in once more.
Ian will tell me what to do, he thinks, as the siren reaches the bottom of the path.
53.
Ian Ventham, exiting Chris Hudson’s Ford Focus is calm—happy, even.
The police have had a placatory chat with him. He’ll come back tomorrow. The graves aren’t going anywhere. Perhaps sending in the diggers so early was a mistake. But it was a cool thing to do, so a mistake worth making. It was a statement, and making statements is important, whatever they are.
He doesn’t mind the residents being up in arms; they’ll soon lose interest. He can just give them something else to complain about—sack one of the waitstaff they like, or ban grandkids from the pool on health and safety grounds. Then they’ll be all “What graveyard?” He has to laugh, really, and so he does.
But at that very moment he sees Father Matthew Mackie, standing there in his frock and little white collar like he owns the place. As bold as you like.
This is Ian’s land, for Christ’s sake! He storms toward the barricade and has his finger in Father Mackie’s face in seconds. “If you weren’t a vicar I would knock you out.” The crowd starts to surround them, as if it’s a fight in a pub car park. “Get off my property, or I’ll get you thrown off.”
Ian aims a shove at Mackie’s shoulder, knocking the older man backward. Mackie reaches out for balance, grabbing Ian’s T-shirt, and the two men lose their balance and fall to the ground together. Donna, with the help of a horrified-looking Karen Playfair, pulls Ian up and off the priest. A group of residents, including Joyce, Ron, and Bernard, then surround and restrain Ian Ventham, while residents on the other side form a guard around Father Mackie, now sitting dazed on the ground. School playground stuff, really, but he looks shaken.
“Calm it, Mr. Ventham; calm down,” yells Donna.
“Arrest him! Trespass!” yells Ian, now being pulled away from the scene by a group of determined septuagenarians, octogenarians, and even one nonagenarian, who missed Second World War call-up by a day and had regretted it ever since.
Joyce finds herself in the scrum. How strong these men must have been in their day. Ron, Bernard, John, Ibrahim. And how diminished they were now. The spirit was still willing at least, but only Chris Hudson was really able to hold Ventham back. The testosterone was lovely while it lasted, though.
“I’m protecting sacred ground. Peacefully and lawfully,” says Father Mackie.
Donna helps Father Mackie to his feet, dusting him down and feeling the frailty of the old man beneath the loose black cassock.
Chris pulls Ian Ventham from the scrum of bodies surrounding him. He can see the adrenaline surging through Ian’s body, the sort of thing he’s seen a thousand times before, in the late-night drunks of too many towns. The veins riding the muscles that poke out from his T-shirt, a giveaway of steroid abuse.
“Home now, Mr. Ventham,” orders Chris Hudson, “before I arrest you.”
“I didn’t touch him,” protests Ian.
Chris remains quiet, to keep the conversation private. “He stumbled, Mr. Ventham; I saw that. But he stumbled after you made contact with him, however light. So if I want to arrest you, I will. And, allow a policeman a hunch, there might be one or two witnesses to help me in court. So if you don’t want to be charged with assaulting a priest, which wouldn’t look good in your brochures, then you get in your car and you drive away. Understand?”
Ian nods, but without conviction, his brain already somewhere else, making some other calculation. He then shakes his head slowly and sadly at Chris Hudson.
“Something’s not right here. Something’s up.”
“Well, whatever’s up will still be up tomorrow,” says Chris. “So get yourself home, calm yourself down, and mop your brow. Be a man and take a defeat.”
Ian turns and walks toward his car. Defeat? As if. As he passes the low-loader, he bangs twice on the cab door and cocks his thumb toward the exit.
He walks slowly, thinking. Where’s Bogdan? Bogdan is a good guy. He’s Polish. Ian needs to get him to tile his swimming pool. He’s too lazy; they all are. He’ll talk to Tony Curran. Tony will know what to do. But did Tony lose his phone? Something about Tony.
Ian reaches the Range Rover. The car has been clamped! His dad will be furious; he’s only borrowed it. He’ll have to get the bus from town, and his dad will be waiting for him. Ian is frightened and starts to cry. Don’t cry, Ian; he’ll see. Ian doesn’t want to go home.
He searches his pockets for change, then stumbles and topples backward. He reaches out for something to hold, but to his surprise there is only air.
Ian Ventham is dead before he hits the ground.
PART TWO
Everyone Here Has a Story toTell
