The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [80]
Mr Piggott appeared round the corner of the barrow. ‘Are we going home now?’ he said, in a surprised tone.
‘Stuart,’ said Miss Chapman, ‘would you mind driving me back?’
Mr Piggott looked uncertainly at Mr Keiller. ‘Alec?’
‘I’ll drive her back.’ He stood up, frighteningly tall, face like thunder. ‘Doris, get in the Caterpillar. I’m not going to ask you to apologize to Miss Robinson immediately, while you’re still overwrought, but you will. She has nothing to do with this, and I certainly have not fucked her, as you so charmingly put it. Stuart, you and Donald look after the girl. She doesn’t need to come back into the office this afternoon, and I’d be grateful if you’d see her home. I’m sorry for the language, Miss Robinson.’
He climbed in and slammed the driver’s door shut. Miss Chapman’s face was white and terrified. The three of us watched the Kegresse bump away down the slope. Why couldn’t he have let Stu Pig go with her?
‘What was all that about?’ asked Mr Piggott. ‘Why is Miss Robinson crying?’
‘Stu, why don’t you carry on measuring your bloody barrow?’ said Mr Cromley. ‘I’ll see Miss Robinson safely home.’
‘I’m not crying,’ I said, setting my jaw tight so my mouth wouldn’t tremble and more tears spill out of my brimming eyes, ‘and I don’t need either of you to see me home. I’d rather be on my own, if you don’t mind.’ I stood up; my legs were shaking. Beside the path, where Miss Chapman had flung it, lay the crumpled drawing. I bent to pick it up, then changed my mind and left it on the grass, all shredded and smeared. Don’t know what happened to it. I suppose Mr Piggott and Mr Cromley threw it away when they cleared up the rugs and the plates from the picnic.
CHAPTER 19
Driving through intermittent, hammering showers, I keep wondering what happened to Frannie’s picture of the Barber Surgeon. It came as a surprise that she was considered a good enough draughtswoman to work as an artist for Keiller. She used to sketch clever little doodles for me when I was a child, but I haven’t seen her draw for years, her fingers now too arthritic to hold a pencil comfortably. The rosewood watercolour box in the drawer where I found Davey’s photo looked as if it had been retired half a century ago.
Unable to find Ed to tell him about the YouTube footage–it’s his day off, the office said–my only option is to track him down in Yatesbury. He probably goes home to his wife in Oxfordshire at weekends, but I guess he spends time off midweek studying in his friend’s place, wherever that may be. All I know is that it’s somewhere ‘near the airfield’. I bypass the main part of the village, and the church where Davey Fergusson is buried, and drive along the airfield’s perimeter road, past the microlight centre, looking for clues.
Little is left to show that this was once a bustling RAF training base, apart from a few skeletal hangars that might be contemporary with its heyday between the wars, when Guy Gibson of the Dambusters learned to fly there. The far end of the field has a sad, neglected feel, the perimeter road not so much a lane as a collection of loosely assembled potholes. Midges dance over the puddles. Wincing at the likely effect on what’s left of the Peugeot’s shock absorbers, I bump slowly down the track towards a pair of mock-Tudor semis, faced in grubby white plaster cladding. A man comes round the side of one of the houses, a shotgun crooked over his arm, a Jack Russell at his heels. The dog starts barking as soon as it sees the car.
‘Sorry.’ I wind down the window, trying not to feel intimidated by the gun. ‘I’m looking for Ed Raleigh.’
The man jerks his head towards a clump of beeches. ‘Down there. Shut up, Bingo.’ He starts up the road in the opposite direction, but the dog stands his ground, waiting to see me off his territory. As I put the car into gear, the man calls over his shoulder, ‘I’d walk if I were you. The potholes get worse.’ He whistles to the dog. It bares its teeth at me in a soundless snarl, then trots after