Chapter 21
It is another beautiful morning.
Bogdan Jankowski is sitting on a swing chair on Ian Ventham’s patio, taking some time to think things through.
Tony Curran has been murdered. Someone broke into his home and killed him. There are plenty of suspects, and Bogdan is going over a few of them in his head, thinking about reasons they might have for wanting Tony Curran dead.
Everyone seems shocked by Tony’s death, but nothing surprises Bogdan.
People die all the time, of all sorts of things.
His father had fallen from a dam near Krakow when Bogdan was a child.
Or jumped, or was pushed; it didn’t matter.
It didn’t change the fact that he had died.
Something will always get you in the end.
Ian’s garden is not to Bogdan’s taste. The lawn, which stretches down to a line of trees in the far distance, is orderly and English and striped.
Down toward the trees, off to the left, there is a pond.
Ian Ventham calls it a lake, but Bogdan knows lakes.
It has a small wooden bridge crossing its far end as it narrows.
Children would love it, but Bogdan has never seen children in this garden.
Ian had bought a family of ducks, but foxes killed the ducks, and then a guy Bogdan knew from the pub had killed the foxes. Ian didn’t buy any more ducks after that, because what was the point? There will always be foxes. Sometimes wild ducks still visited. Good luck to them, was Bogdan’s view.
The swimming pool is directly on Bogdan’s right. You could take a few steps down from the patio and dive straight in.
Bogdan had tiled the swimming pool. Bogdan had painted the little bridge duck-egg blue, and Bogdan had laid the patio he was sitting on.
Ian had come good on his offer, and had asked him to oversee the building of the Woodlands.
So Bogdan was taking over from Tony, which some people might now see as bad luck, a jinx, perhaps.
But to Bogdan it was just something that was happening, and he would do it as well as he was able.
Good money. The money doesn’t really interest Bogdan, but the challenge does.
And he likes being around the village; he likes the people.
Bogdan had seen all the plans now, studied everything. They were complicated at first, but, once you’d seen the patterns, simple enough. He enjoyed working smaller jobs for Ian Ventham; he liked the order of it. But he understands that things change, and that he needs to step up.
Bogdan’s mother had died when he was nineteen.
She had come into some money when Bogdan’s father had died—from somewhere; it hadn’t been a time for details.
The money paid for Bogdan to take up a place at the technical university in Krakow to study engineering.
And that’s where he had been when his mother suffered a stroke and collapsed at home.
If he had still been at home, then he would have saved her, but he wasn’t, and so he didn’t.
Bogdan came home, buried his mother, and left for England the next day. Nearly twenty years later he is looking at a stupid lawn.
He is thinking that he will maybe close his eyes for a moment when, from the other side of the house, comes the deep sound of the front door chimes. A rare visitor to this big, quiet house, and the reason Ian has asked Bogdan to be here today.
Ian slides back the patio door of his study. “Bogdan. Door.”
“Yes, of course.” Bogdan gets to his feet. He goes in via the conservatory he designed, through the music room he’d soundproofed, and into the hallway he had once sanded in his underpants on the hottest day of the year.
Whatever you needed him to do.
Father Matthew Mackie is regretting asking his cabbie to drop him at the bottom of the drive.
It had been quite the walk from the front gates to the front door.
He fans himself a little with his file, then, quickly using the camera on his phone to check that his dog collar is straight, rings the bell.
He is relieved to hear noises from within the house, because you never know, even when you’ve made arrangements. He was happy to meet here; it makes things easier all round.
He hears footsteps on a wooden floor, and the door is opened by a broad man with a shaved head. He wears a tight white T-shirt, and he has a cross tattooed on one forearm, with three names on the other.
“Father,” says the man. Good news, a Catholic. And judging by the accent, Polish.
“Dzień dobry,” says Father Mackie.
The man smiles back, “Dzień dobry, dzień dobry.”
“I have an appointment to see Mr. Ventham. Matthew Mackie.”
The man takes his hand and shakes it. “Bogdan Jankowski. Come in please, Father.”
“We understand, believe me, that you have no legal imperative to help us,” says Father Matthew Mackie. “We disagree with the council’s ruling, of course, but we must accept it.”
Mike Griffin, from the Planning Committee, had done his job well, thinks Ian. Feel free to dig up the graveyard, Ian, he’d said. Be our guest. Mike Griffin is addicted to online casinos, and long may that continue.
“However, I do think you have a moral obligation to leave the Garden of Eternal Rest, the graveyard, exactly where it is,” continues Father Mackie. “And I wanted to meet you face-to-face, man-to-man, and see if we can come to a compromise.”
Ian Ventham listens closely, but in honesty is really thinking about how clever he is. He is the cleverest person he knows, that’s for certain. That’s how he gets what he wants. It feels almost unfair sometimes. He’s not just one step ahead of you; he’s on an entirely different path.
Karen Playfair had been an easy one. If he can’t persuade Gordon Playfair to sell his land, then he knows she will. Dads and daughters. And she’d see a chunk of the money, surely. An old man can only turn down a seven-figure sum for a big hill for so long. Ian would always find a way.
But Father Mackie is trickier than Karen Playfair; he sees that.
Priests weren’t like divorcées in their early fifties who could stand to lose a few pounds, were they?
You had to pretend to have some respect, and maybe you actually should have some respect.
After all, what if they were right? Open mind.
Which was another example of cleverness being useful.
That’s why Ian has asked Bogdan to join them. He knows this lot like to stick together, and quite right, who doesn’t? He realizes he should probably speak.
“We’re only moving the bodies, Father,” says Ian. “It will be done with the greatest of care, and the greatest of respect.”
Ian knows that this is not strictly true.
Legally he had had to put the job out for public tender.
Three bids had come in. One was from the University of Kent Forensic Anthropology Department, who would certainly do the job with the greatest care and respect.
One was from a firm of “cemetery specialists” in Rye, who recently moved thirty graves from the site of a new Pets at Home store.
They included pictures of solemn men and women in dark blue overalls digging out graves by hand.
The last was from a company set up two months ago by Ian himself, with a funeral director from Brighton he had met playing golf, and Sue Banbury from Ian’s village, who rented out diggers.
That final pitch was extremely competitive and had won the business.
Ian had looked into the excavation of cemeteries online, and it wasn’t rocket science.
“Some of these graves are over a hundred and fifty years old, Mr. Ventham,” says Father Mackie.
“Call me Ian.”
Ian hadn’t strictly needed to have this meeting, but he feels it’s better to be safe than sorry.
A lot of the residents can get quite “churchy” when it suits them, and he wouldn’t want Father Mackie stirring up trouble.
People get funny about corpses. So hear the man out, reassure him, send him happily on his way.
Donate to something? There’s a thought to keep in the back pocket.
“The company you’ve employed to relocate the cemetery”—Mackie looks at his file—“Angels in Transit, ‘the cremoval specialists,’ they know what they’re going to find, I hope?
There won’t be many intact coffins, Ian, just bones.
And not skeletons; loose bones, broken down, scattered, half-rotted, sunk through the earth.
And every single fragment of every bone, in every single grave, needs to be found, needs to be documented, and needs to be respected.
That’s basic decency, but don’t forget that it is also the law. ”
Ian nods, though he is actually wondering if it is possible to paint a digger black. Sue will know.
“I am here today,” continues Father Mackie, “to ask you to think again, to leave these ladies where they are, to leave them in peace. Man-to-man. I don’t know what it would cost you to do that; that’s your business.
But you have to understand that as a man of God, it’s my business too. I don’t want these women moved.”
“Matthew, I appreciate you coming to see us,” says Ian.
“And I see what you’re saying about angels.
Souls in torment, et cetera—if I’m reading you right?
But you said it yourself, all we’ll find now is bones.
That’s all there is. And you can choose to be superstitious, or religious in your case, I see that, but I can choose not to be.
Now, we’ll take care of the bones, and I’m happy for you to be there and watch the lot if that’s what floats your boat.
But I want to move the cemetery, I’m allowed to move the cemetery, and I’m going to move the cemetery.
If that makes me whatever I am, then so be it. Bones don’t mind where they are.”
“If I can’t change your mind, then I will make this as difficult as I possibly can for you. I need you to know that,” says Father Mackie.
“Join the queue, Father,” says Ian. “I’ve got the RSPCA up in arms about badgers.
I’ve got the Kent Forestry Something banging on about protected trees.
With you it’s nuns. I’ve got to comply with EU regulations on heat emissions, on light pollution, on bathroom fittings, and a hundred other things, even though I seem to remember we voted to leave.
I’ve got residents bleating about benches, I’ve got English Heritage telling me my bricks don’t qualify as sustainable, and the cheapest cement guy in the entire South of England has just gone to prison for VAT fraud.
You are not my biggest problem, Father, not even close. ”
Ian finally draws breath.
“Also, Tony died, so is difficult time for everyone,” adds Bogdan, crossing himself.
“Yeah, yep. Also, Tony died. Difficult time,” agrees Ian.
Father Mackie turns to Bogdan, now that he has broken his silence. “And what do you think, my son? About moving the Garden of Eternal Rest? You don’t think we’re disturbing souls? You don’t think there will be penance for this?”
“Father, I think God watches over everything, and judges everything,” says Bogdan. “But I think bones is bones.”