The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [146]
‘Ring the police.’
‘Mobile’s out of battery. If I could get a signal.’
‘Well, write down the numberplate, and let’s pretend we’re not here. There are two of them and they’re–’
‘Rather big. I can see. It is mostly lard, though,’ he concludes hopefully.
‘In which case they’ll fry you. You don’t stand a chance, Ed.’
‘Unfortunately it’s my job to be beaten up by burglars.’
The man in the camouflage combats goes to the back of the van and opens the doors. One bears a sticker: a luminous triangle with Stargate Earth Project inscribed underneath. The other man, in black, flicks on a powerful torch, strolls a few paces under the trees, bends down and picks something up off the ground. When he straightens, the torchbeam flares and almost blinds me as it finds Ed’s grey-green caravan, which until then would have been invisible in the semi-darkness. The beam dips and the man in black stares–can he see us watching?–then calls, ‘Not here, Karl.’ He throws down whatever he picked up and starts back to the Transit, a circle of torchlight bobbing ahead of him and illuminating Karl’s puzzled face. He is midway through hauling something out of the back of the van. His friend in black swings the torchbeam to show him the caravan.
‘Oh, crikey’, says Karl.
‘Crikey?’ mutters Ed in my ear. ‘What kind of self-respecting villain says crikey?’ He drops down under the window, his shoulders shaking. Giggles are welling in both of us. I stuff a corner of the Thomas the Tank Engine curtain in my mouth, then remember how grubby it is, which makes it all the harder not to laugh.
The torchbeam gleams on shiny black plastic as it catches the long, awkward object Karl is shoving hastily back into the Transit. The van doors slam. Karl trots back and hauls himself into the driver’s seat. The engine fires, the Transit executes a hasty three-point turn, and lurches up the pot-holed perimeter road away from us. A few moments later, Bingo’s high-pitched yap starts up again.
Ed erupts into snorts of laughter. ‘Crikey!’ he splutters. ‘I say, crikey? Then he spots me zipping up my jeans. ‘Indy, don’t go. I’m serious–Jeanine left me right after the crash. We communicate mostly through her solicitor.’
‘I’m not going.’ I fasten my belt, and cast around for my fleece. ‘Or, rather, you need to come along with me. I arrived on foot. Where are your car keys?’
‘What are you on about?’
‘Didn’t you see what those guys had in the back of the Transit?’
‘I was laughing too much.’
‘That was a metal detector. They’re nighthawks. Bet you a tenner they’re off to dig up barrows on Windmill Hill.’
The Transit’s rear lights, bouncing slowly over the rutted perimeter road, are still visible as we race out of the caravan to Ed’s Land Rover, parked by the hangars. Bingo, a white blur dancing back and forth across the road in the semi-darkness, is barking his stout little heart out. As the white van reaches him he makes a dash and tries to bite one of the wheels. I avert my eyes, but when I open them again, Bingo is still in one piece, his tiny frame quivering with indignation as he yaps a ‘good riddance’ after the Transit. Then he hears us driving along the track, jumps round joyfully and starts up all over again. Somehow we avoid flattening him–not an easy job without headlights–and swing out of the turning in time to see the Transit’s rear lights disappear up the lane that leads to Yatesbury village.
‘D’you suppose they know we’re following?’ I ask.
‘Possibly. The driver might not have spotted us if he isn’t looking in his rear-view mirror.’
Ahead, the van’s lights are crawling along the lane.
‘They must be lost,’ I say. ‘Seems unlikely you’d go looking for treasure round the perimeter of an airfield–the soil has to be full of old nuts and bolts and all sorts of junk. Must play havoc with the settings.’
‘Why are you so sure they’re heading for Windmill Hill, though? Plenty of other sites round here you could pick up Bronze Age finds. Roman stuff too.’