Shadesmoor, page 1
Shadesmoor
Jason Foss
© Jason Foss 1995
Jason Foss has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 2001, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in the U.K. in 1995 by Severn House Publishers Ltd
This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd
For Helen
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Extract from Darkness Rises by Jason Foss
Prologue
‘Traitor!’ Tyrone said.
‘Traitor!’ Vikki repeated, with extra conviction.
Jeffrey Flint looked across the narrow table in the cabin of his houseboat. These were his friends. Tyrone, his research student had the square-jawed, cropped blonde-headed look of a Nazi submarine commander, with politics to match. Vikki was Flint’s sometime lover; dark, cute and diminutive. He had only just met the pretty American undergraduate named Mary-Ann who blinked at him from behind Tyrone’s elbow.
‘Say ‘Traitor’,’ he urged her, ‘everyone else has.’
‘Traitor’, she giggled.
His news had been kept back until the three dinner guests were deep into their Chinese chicken with cashew nuts. Flint had hoped for a more warming reaction.
‘Congratulate me,’ he appealed.
Tyrone was smartly dressed in a light plum shirt and variegated jungle tie. A wayward beansprout joined the foliage, as he tried to manoeuvre chopsticks at the same time as expressing protests.
‘You can’t leave, you’re supposed to be my supervisor.’
‘You’ve finished,’ Flint said. ‘I’m not going until July, by that time your thesis will be on my desk and you’ll be out in the big, bad world.’
‘What about me?’ Vikki had an uncompromising East End accent and an expression to match.
‘You’re off doing tabloid television half the time. You won’t miss me.’
‘But Yorkshire?’ Tyrone sneered.
‘It’s not the end of the universe. The Romans civilised the Brigantes, remember? It’s not all dark satanic mills.’
‘But you’re throwing yourself into a black hole. Who’s ever heard of the University of North Yorkshire?’
‘It used to be North Yorkshire Polytechnic…’
‘A poly!’
‘Not any more.’
‘So they stuck a new sign at the gate. A poly is a poly no matter what they call it. This is death to your career, Doc. Why are you doing it?’
‘Yes, why?’ Vikki asked, grabbing at the Liebfraumilch bottle and overfilling her tumbler.
Flint jabbed a chopstick at his student. ‘Money,’ he said, then switched the point towards Vikki. ‘Power,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t pass it up, either of you. Lecturer II, another five grand a year and only one body between me and the professor’s chair.’
Tyrone continued to attack. ‘You always said you never wanted to be a professor.’
‘You used to say “all power corrupts”,’ Vikki added. ‘You’re selling out, Jeff.’ She leaned across to Tyrone. ‘Can’t you just see Professor Flint one day in one of those silly little flat hats and a batman cape?’
‘I think it’s great,’ young Mary-Ann suddenly intervened, then doubted herself.
‘Glad someone does.’ Flint raised his own tumbler. ‘A toast to selfish success.’
‘You haven’t got the job yet,’ Vikki retorted.
‘I’ve been invited to apply for the post, the interview’s next week: it’s mine on a plate.’
‘There’s a catch,’ she said. ‘I bet there’s a catch.’
Flint was drinking his own health, and gave himself a few moments before responding. He decided he would have to do something about Vikki’s taste in wine.
‘Tyrone, did you ever meet Tom Aitken? Big bloke, hunky, doesn’t suffer fools.’
‘Didn’t he speak at the last Field Archaeology Conference? He’s a bit pushy.’
‘That’s him, the Action Man of northern archaeology. Well Tom wanted this ’ere job that I’m going to make my own.’
‘What stopped him?’ Vikki asked.
‘Three weeks ago, someone cracked him over the back of the head with a Palaeolithic hand-axe.’
Vikki had wide, very dark brown eyes to complement her short spiky hair. Her pupils dilated to swamp all colour from her irises.
‘I knew there’d be a catch.’
Chapter One
Theakston’s Old Peculier was on sale at the staff bar of the University of North Yorkshire. As the rich, black, fruity liquid touched Flint’s lips, he knew there was a bonus in moving north. Half a pint only, just enough to steady the nerves and raise the pulse. He felt unnatural in the new charcoal-grey suit and subdued floral tie. His straw-blonde beard had been trimmed close to his cheeks and his hair now hovered above the collar. A last-minute switch of glasses saw him in executive gold rather than radical red. Uncomfortable and apprehensive, he needed all the reassurance he could buy.
‘So the job is as good as mine?’ he asked, once his mouth had savoured its treat.
Opposite him in a low green chair slouched a short, spreading academic, dark haired and a little unkempt. Although some two or three years Flint’s senior, Keith Barnes was making little headway into the archaeological establishment. He had briefly held a research place at Central College, where Flint and everyone else had known him simply as Barney.
‘It’s yours,’ Barney said. ‘Betty likes to think she’s still an enfant terrible, so anyone left of Trotsky is okay by her.’
Flint had always found it hard to think of Professor Betty Vine as anything but a mouse-like schoolmarm, but knew she struck like a ferret when aroused.
‘Wasn’t she at the Sorbonne in ’68?’
‘So the legend reads. It must have been about the same time they built this dump.’
Another sip, then a glance around at the ambience of the split-level bar. Its suspended ceiling had given Flint the urge to mind his head as he had walked in. The pine-panelled walls were a mistake and the modern art was not as modern as it had once been. In compensation, the bar manager made up for the late ’60s layout by lavishing care on his ales and time might come when Flint needed a handy sanctuary.
‘I’m a little surprised you didn’t want this post.’ Only a little, but Flint had to be polite with the man who would be his junior. ‘Did you go for it?’
‘No, no, my papers don’t include sufficient reference to dead French sociologists…and I don’t dig.’
‘You should—it enhances your street cred.’
‘It’s a nasty, messy business only to be undertaken by undergraduates and consenting adults.’
‘Okay, so you’re out of the running, but doesn’t Betty fancy anyone else?’
‘She wanted Tom Aitken.’
‘Why? He wasn’t one of us desk-bound academics, he was a true, red-blooded field archaeologist. I can’t recall him ever writing a challenging, cerebral paper; certainly not from a Marxist perspective.’
‘He dug – she wanted a digger.’
‘But I’m told he was impossible to work with.’
‘Now that’s not entirely correct old bean; he was a man you either loved or hated. You either applauded his methods, or he got right up your nose.’
‘Where did you lie in the love/hate stakes?’
Barney took a deep quaff of his beer and wiped away a little froth from his thick, rubbery lips. ‘We were at Newcastle together. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but he was an arrogant shit. I think Megan would have resigned if he had been appointed.’
‘Doctor Megan Preece?’
‘That’s the woman, Power and Gender in Mediaeval Wales: you must know the book, it’s a classic piece of feminist bra-busting nonsense. She’s Reader in Medieval Archaeology and definitely your type. She was also Tom Aitken’s type, incidentally.’
Flint had always found Barney unsubtle, or perhaps he was only blunt with his confidences.
‘He was a bit of a lad, wasn’t he? Was she one of his old flames?’
‘Discarded bit of fluff.’ Barney raised a thick black eyebrow. ‘Tom was hardly a lad either, he must be my age…’
‘Thirty-eight.’ Research was never wasted.
‘Yes, well. He should have grown out of it.’
Flint knew that Barney was a determined bachelor. He leaned in over his beer. ‘I had an uncomfortable thought riding up in the train this morning. Could there be any connection between the bizarre way Tom Aitken met his end and the choice of me as favourite to replace him?’
Barney nodded, long and slow, with obvious amusement.
‘Whodunit, Barney?’
When Barney grinned, his face looked as if someone had begun to inflate a pink dinghy.
‘Oh, we were all suspects. Things became quite exciting for a day or two, they took statements from the entire department. ‘Where were you on the night of the fifteenth?’ and all that rigmarole.’
‘And did you have a good alibi?’
‘Yes—I was at the early medieval pot conference in Carlisle. The police even rang the organiser to check I was not committing perjury. Still, we were all able to breathe freely, for the police arrested a felon only a day or two after the foul deed was discovered. You must have read the story in the papers? The accused claims he was set up by international art thieves: “it’s a plot, a capitalist plot”.’
Flint remembered something he’d read in the Guardian about a massive theme park development at the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors. ‘Does any of this have anything to do with Shadesmoor?’
‘Oh we do recruit bright boys, right on the nail! Do you see why we need you? We want someone who won’t get bashed on the head with a hand-axe when he upsets the wrong people.’
‘Is that likely?’ Flint was after a cushy academic sinecure, not violent adventure.
‘No, no, forget it, only jesting old bean.’
Flint took a deep gulp of the beer. Oh Barney what a liar you are, was the message which accompanied the alcohol to his brain. Archaeology is a small world, so Barney must know that Flint’s investigations had found him looking beyond the realms of academia into murkier provinces of death and disappearance. Vikki’s flamboyant reporting had done much to promote Flint as some kind of archaeological Sam Spade—or at least, ‘Sam Trowel’.
The golden hands of the minimalist clock ticked round another minute and Flint made a determined effort not to leave his beer standing.
Barney began to play at interviews. ‘So, Doctor Flint, what do you think of Competitive Tendering?’
‘It stinks. I mean, you discover a site which could be of national importance, then you ask half a dozen excavation units to fight for the contract to excavate it. Who wins? The best? No, the cheapest, and archaeology suffers.’
‘So, does Developer Funding raise your hackles too?’
‘That and all the other horrors which crawled out of the 1980s. Seriously, Barney, developers don’t care about archaeology, they just want it out of the way. I’d admit it sounds like a sparkling idea to force them to pay for the excavation of their sites, but then we’re back to the pursuit of the lowest tender.’
‘Ah, don’t repeat all that for Betty will you, because your job description requires you to split yourself fifty-fifty between lecturing and running the college excavation unit.’
Standard practice, thought Flint. ‘And I assume the unit tenders for external work?’
‘It will—it has to. We need the money.’
‘Does the unit just employ students or have you any permanent staff?’
‘Betty is talking of two excavation assistants on six-month contracts.’
‘You can’t ask people to work six-month contracts!’
‘Yes you can—they like it, or they’re on the dole. The nation has no shortage of unemployed archaeology graduates. I think you’re in for a shock, Jeffrey. This is not cushy old Central College London; working here means adapting. Come the revolution, you can change things the way you want them to be, until then…’ Barney had dull brown eyes set in milky-blue, which rolled noticeably as he sought his watch. ‘Time for the interrogation chamber,’ he announced. ‘Best of British, and don’t worry about Betty. She’ll love you.’
*
The architecture of the Polytechnic was low-rise, late 1960s, brutal and modernist. Its saving grace was light, which flooded into every office and seminar room through floor-length glass windows. The panel of two men and two women who interviewed Dr Jeffrey Flint were thus bathed in brilliant yellow sunshine.
‘It was a glorious ideal, Doctor Flint,’ Professor Betty Vine declaimed as the interview began. ‘Demolish an airbase and build a centre of learning; swords into ploughshares.’
Betty Vine crouched over her desk, passing a pencil from hand to hand, bushy grey eyebrows tending to frown, her jaws asking urgent questions. Flint blazed his way through the responses, which were hardly challenged, creating an illusion that the procedure was a mere formality. Towards the end of the interview came the rub: the excavation unit—and Flint had come ready-armed with a strategy for leading it in the field.
‘…so you already have ideas about the archaeological unit? It needs to return a profit—I know this sounds strange, but we live in strange times. Do you know about the Shadesmoor development?’
‘A little,’ Flint said, hoping his little would be adequate. ‘Shadesmoor Castle is being turned into some sort of medieval theme park. Where does the university stand on that? Hasn’t there been a lot of opposition?’
Professor Betty looked at one of her august and almost silent colleagues. ‘The history of the project is long and tortured. We were initially appalled, but the planning process has been followed to its conclusion, and the conclusion is that there shall be a theme park. I’m told that this is the only direction the heritage industry can take.’
The professor explained that once planning permission had been given, events would snowball. Statute would demand that archaeologists investigate the site to identify areas of historical importance or archaeological deposits which could be damaged by the development. The developer would be informed and he might adjust his plans to miss the most sensitive areas. If not, these areas would have to be excavated before development could proceed. Flint knew all this, but nodded politely.
‘It will be a big project, lasting several years and the millionaire big shot person…’ Betty fished for a name, ‘Mr Grimston—is talking about spending amounts of money which the average excavation unit could never expect to see.’
For all his idealism, Flint knew there was a time to be a radical anti-materialist and a time to be pragmatic. He feigned enthusiasm. ‘We need that project for our unit,’ he said, trusting this was the required answer.
His familiarity caused four smiles along the interview panel. ‘I don’t think we have any more questions, do we?’ The Professor prompted grumbles of assent. ‘Could you wait outside, Jeffrey, for a few minutes?’
*
Corners of Flint’s London office had not seen daylight for years. Books migrated towards packing cases, whilst box files stood in expectant heaps. As he squatted on the floor, the song he hummed was a tuneless piece of trash he’d caught on late night radio—‘Daisy Chainsaw’ or some such talent. Flint rolled his poster of the Portland Vase and slipped an elastic band over the end. A knock was followed by Tyrone poking his blow-dried blonde fringe around the office door.
‘Hi, Tyrone, wander in, step over the mess.’
Kitted out in slacks, suspended by crimson stock-broker braces, Tyrone was hardly the typical research student. He manoeuvred around a pile of green box files, then stuck both hands into his pockets. ‘Hey, Doc you’re taking this seriously.’
‘Northern lights a-calling me…’
‘You got the job?’
‘Sure did.’ Flint beamed, expecting opposition. ‘Thesis done?’
Tyrone grinned. ‘I’m taking it to the binders this afternoon.’
Flint had already glanced through Tyrone’s monster Ph.D. thesis, enticingly titled De-Romanisation in fourth and fifth century Britain. At some 100,000 words of typescript (plus plates), it would take up half a supermarket box on its own.
‘Doctor Tyrone Drake?’ Flint mulled over the idea, feigning pain. ‘How will the world react to that? There’s still the viva, perhaps we will manage to stop you at the oral examination.’
‘There’s no stopping me now!’ Tyrone asserted, with just a little uncertainty. ‘When will it be?’
‘Autumn sometime – give me a chance to have the brute weighed.’
‘You’ll return to do the examination?’
‘Of course, and so will you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re unemployed, Tyrone. You’re one of the three million, a burden on society, a social parasite…’
‘Oi, not yet!’ The Thatcherite was offended. ‘I’m going to set up my consultancy. I’m calling it ‘Diggers Unlimited’.’
