Jane had never seen Gomer quite like this before, although she’d heard the tales. The legend.
Ciggy glowing malevolently in the centre of his teeth, like a ruby in the face of some Indian idol, he rode the mini-JCB into the middle of the field to where the earth was banked. The digger was the size of a heavy-duty ride-on mower. A big yellow Tonka toy. Nev’s truck was parked a few yards back, engine running, headlights full beam. Next to it, at a slight angle, was Gomer’s Land Rover, with Sophie inside.
In any other situation, Jane would have found this deeply, shockingly thrilling, but tonight she only wanted to get it over with, and find Mum.
This was Prosser’s ground, turned over to the archaeologists who’d dug trenches all over the place, and then paid fat Nev to replace the tons of removed soil. Up here with Mum yesterday, Gomer had noticed a part that was not professionally finished. Not how he’d taught Nev to do it. Not seeded, but clumsily planted with turf. Not made good to Gomer Parry Plant Hire standards.
Gomer had taken it up with Nev. Nev had been offended. Nev said he’d left a bloody perfect job, banked up and seeded tidy.
Now, it could be that Gareth Prosser had buried some sheep here, but no sheep grazed this area, and it was a long way to come for a dull, lazy bugger like Gareth.
‘Eirion!’ Gomer yelled. ‘Do me a favour, boy, back the ole Land Rover up a few feet, then we can see the top o’ the mound.’
‘OK.’ Eirion ran through the mud.
‘Jane!’ Sophie called from the truck. ‘Either you come in here, or I’m coming out for you.’ Knowing Jane was quite keen to sneak away and snatch a look at the ruins of the church across the brook, to see if they were all lit up.
‘Oh, Sophie, Gomer might need some help.’
‘Very well.’ The truck’s passenger door creaked open. There was a squelch. ‘Blast!’
Jane grinned. Sophie was not the kind to carry wellies in the boot.
The bucket of the little digger went into the soft bank like a spoon into chocolate fudge. Gomer had thought this mini-JCB might be more appropriate than a big one, in the circumstances, and also less conspicuous. It couldn’t be an awful lot less conspicuous, with all the noise Gomer was making.
‘This is quite ridiculous.’ Sophie was now limping across the field, serious mud-splashes on her camel coat. ‘I don’t know how I ever agreed-’
‘You didn’t agree. We dragged you along. I’m sorry, Sophie. You’ve been, like, really brilliant today.’
‘Shut up, Jane.’
‘We could have told the police, I suppose, but they probably couldn’t have done anything without going to a magistrate for a warrant or something, and that would have meant tomorrow.’
‘Mind yourselves!’ Gomer bawled. The arm of the digger swung, the bucket dipped with a slurping, sucking sound. Jane wondered if Minnie’s exasperated spirit was watching him now.
The bucket clanged and shivered. ‘-ucking Nora!’ Gomer snarled. The digger’s hydraulic feet gripped at the slippery earth, the whole machine bucked and Gomer rose from the seat like a cowboy. He turned and spat out his cigarette end. ‘Eirion! Can you get the ole torch to that, see what we got there?’
But it was a just a big rock, too big for the digger to shift. Gomer and Eirion had to manhandle it out of the way. It took ages; they both got filthy.
After about half an hour, there was a new bank of earth, three feet high, at right angles to the one they were excavating. It was like some First World War landscape. Jane wandered over to the digger.
‘Gomer, look, suppose Sophie and I go back and see what’s happened to Mum? Is that OK?’
‘Sure t’be.’ Gomer sat back in the headlight beams, his glasses brown-filmed. ‘We en’t gettin’ nowhere fast yere. Bloody daft idea, most likely. Gotter put all this shit back, too, ’fore we leaves.’
‘It was worth a try, Gomer. You aren’t usually wrong. OK, look, we’ll get back just as soon as we-’
‘Mr Parry!’ Eirion’s face turned round from the gouged-out bank.
‘Ar?’
‘Oh bloody hell, Mr Parry.’ Eirion slurped desperately out of the clay. He dropped the lamp and his muddy hands went to his mouth. Jane heard him vomiting, the sick slapping into the mud.
Gomer was out of his seat, grabbing the hand lamp from where it had rolled. ‘Stay there, Jane. Bloody stay there!’
Jane froze where she was, in the clinging mud. All those crass remarks she’d made to Mum after Mumford had been, after the radio reports. It should have been her, not Eirion. She deserved to face this horror.
Sophie was hopping towards her. ‘What is it?’
‘They’ve found something.’
‘Then let’s call the police.’
‘He needs to make sure, Sophie.’
Realizing, with a horrible, freezing feeling that Gomer wasn’t in any position to make sure of this. Only she was.
She would have to face it.
‘Sorry.’ Eirion came back. His baseball cap had gone. His face gleamed with greasy clay and sweat. There were touchingly childish mud streaks around his mouth where he’d wiped it with his hand. ‘That was inexcusable.’
‘Irene…?’
‘It was the smell, I suppose.’ He shuddered. ‘I just put my hand down this kind of fissure and this whole wall of stuff came down and like… Oh God.’ He turned away, pushing slimy fingers through his hair.
Gomer came back for the spade.
‘Is it?’ Jane was shocked at the weakness of her own voice.
‘’Ang about,’ Gomer said non-committally.
Sophie said, her voice dry and clipped, ‘Is it, Mr Parry?’
‘Well… likely.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, give me that torch!’ Sophie snatched the rubber-covered lamp from a caterpillar of the mini-JCB and stalked off into the murk.
Gomer followed her with the spade, called back over his shoulder, ‘Better stay there, girl. En’t nothin’ you can do.’
‘I kind of think there is, actually,’ Jane said sadly. She slithered after him towards the bank. Eirion plunged into the mud, grabbed her.
‘No…’
‘Irene, I’m the only one of us who’s actually seen her.’
‘Jane, believe me… that is not going to help you.’
‘What?’
Even over the clatter of three engines, she heard Sophie’s moan. Ahead of her, the newly unearthed soil and clay was shining almost white in the intersecting beams, and had that multihued, stretched look, like when you bent a Mars bar in half. Sophie came back, slapping dirt from her hands.
‘Go back. Now!’
‘Sophie…?’
‘It’s a woman.’
‘Could it be Barb-?’
‘Cashmere and tweed,’ Sophie said. ‘She’s wearing cashmere and tweed.’
‘What does she look like? I’ve seen her, you see. When she first came up to Mum at the funeral…’
‘Come on, Jane.’
‘I’m not a little kid, you know. Let me just-’
‘Jane.’ Eirion took her hand in his mud-encrusted paw. ‘We don’t know what she looks like.’
Sophie said coldly, ‘Someone seems to have hacked her face to pieces before they buried her.’
Sophie’s camel coat was ruined.