The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [175]
‘Is the tailgate unlocked?’ I ask. ‘I’ll sort out the sound gear.’
‘Ed has it.’ She runs a hand through her heavy fringe, then pinches the bridge of her nose. ‘Take up some more batteries if you want to be useful. Sorry. I’m being an old cow today. Hormones. And getting up at three a.m. for nothing. Oh, for some real sunshine.’ She kicks the car again. ‘If not today, for the aerials, now we’ve arranged the chopper hire.’
‘Aerials?’ I say uneasily.
‘Of course. Your mate Ed’s going to help.’
‘He doesn’t have a helicopter.’ I can’t believe Ed would do this, with the inquest imminent. It’s asking for trouble.
‘Told you, we’re hiring one.’
‘When?’
‘Soon as the weather improves.’
‘You OK?’ asks Ed, taking an armful of camera batteries from me at the top of the hill. ‘That dog seemed to upset you, this morning.’
‘I’m more upset by the idea of you filming aerials.’ Under a cloudy sky, the entrance to the Long Barrow looms over us, huge stone snaggle teeth hiding its dark throat. The entrance to the Lower World. Tbby doesn’t know you were involved in the Alton Barnes crash. You think she’d be happy about letting her crew fly with you if she did?’
‘I need the money’
Harry the cameraman appears from behind the stones masking the entrance to the barrow and, without a word, picks up a new battery, clipping it to the back of the camera.
‘Sell the bloody house and barns,’ I hiss.
‘They belonged to my wife,’ he says, so quietly I have to lean forward to make out the words. ‘I owe more than a hundred thou. Told you. I’m flicked unless I keep flying.’
Ibby arrives, face flushed from the climb. ‘Martin’s here. Saw him parking as I came up the hill.’ She goes to confer with Harry, handing him a PAG light to attach to the camera.
I kneel and open one of the silvery boxes to find the radio mic. Ed hasn’t moved.
‘Go on, piss off,’ I tell him. ‘I’m working. And while you’re about it, don’t suppose you noticed the white van in the lay-by?’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Aviation-archaeologist Karl on his lunch break.’ I check the mic’s power pack and start unwinding its lead. ‘I gave him fifty quid to replace his metal detector. Broke as you are, you might like to stump up a tenner too, if he’s still there.’
Ed snorts. ‘Christ, Indy, you can be so nave. Aviation archaeologist, my arse. They were nighthawks, all right. Vultures. And it is against the law. I looked up a couple of metal detectorist sites.’
‘What’s so illegal about hunting down old airfields?’
‘That’s not what they’re after. They’re looking for crashed planes–Second World War, usually, and that is against the law, regardless of whether they have the landowner’s permission, because it might be a war grave. If the plane burned, the bodies weren’t always recoverable. Sometimes the site was simply covered with earth. And if it was a German plane, there’s a thriving market for Nazi memorabilia. Anyway, now you know what your fifty quid’s going towards. Excuse me if I don’t contribute.’ He throws the last battery onto the ground and walks off.
I stare at the microphone in my hand, thinking of what Frannie said about Davey Fergusson. He in’t buried. He’s with what was left of his aeroplane, ashes, mostly
Where?
‘Sorry to hear about your friend,’ I tell Martin, as I pin the tiny radio mic to his lapel.
Martin, for once not making his usual flirtatious comments when I’m fiddling with his clothing, grunts.
‘And…your married man. I didn’t know. You let me blether on about all my romantic entanglements and…’
Martin’s cold stare dries the words in my mouth. ‘If you weren’t so bloody self-absorbed,