To Dream of the Dead Read Online Free PDF

was the only one of its kind in Europe. Seriously significant.
    So
significant that the philistine bastards on Herefordshire Council were shoving a new road across it.
    Jane knew all about this. She’d pasted up the news cuttings as part of her A-level project, with a picture of Prof. William Blore next to the partly uncovered Serpent.
    ‘Coops, come on, what he said . . . the council were asking for it. You know that.’
    ‘Let’s not forget that if it hadn’t been for the work on the road, we wouldn’t have found the Ribbon in the first place.’
    ‘
Serpent
. Yeah, but—’
    ‘Same with Coleman’s Meadow and the housing plan. Same with most finds. Most archaeology today is rescue archaeology, you grow to accept that.’
    ‘Especially in this bloody county,’ Jane said. ‘But that’s what’s so good about Bill Blore. He doesn’t accept bureaucratic bullshit.’
    In her picture, big Bill Blore was stripped to the waist, deeply tanned, hard hat at an angle. Thickset, maybe, but not fat. He’d said that Herefordshire, having been neglected for decades, was now yielding stuff that could change our whole perception of Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age societies.
    And, because she’d quoted it in an essay, Jane knew exactly what he’d said about the council’s decision to go ahead with the new road, regardless.
    ‘He said local authorities shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions affecting major national heritage sites. Especially councils as short-sighted, pig-headed and ignorant as Hereford’s.’
    ‘Words to that effect,’ Coops said stiffly.
    ‘Those
actual
words . . . actually.’ Excitement began to ripple through Jane. ‘Coops, this is just so
totally cool
.’
    ‘Jane, it’s
not
. Blore’s got into Coleman’s Meadow through the back door, now he’s running this prestigious dig right under the nose of an authority he’s publicly trashed. That is not cool. That is a very uncomfortable situation for all of us.’
    ‘Only if you work for the council.’
    ‘They’re blaming my department, naturally. Lucky I still have a job. OK, unless Dore Valley had told us themselves, there was no
way
we could’ve known that Blore was quietly moving in while we were negotiating with them, but that’s not how some people see it.’
    ‘You wanted to leave the council anyway, didn’t you?’
    ‘Yeah,’ Coops said. ‘I
did
.’
    Another silence. Jane held her breath. She was picking up stuff she could really use – like at the university interviews? To show how seriously au fait she was with trench gossip.
    She’d also be able to tell them she’d worked with Bill Blore.
    Wow
.
    ‘Just that when I was asked to join Dore Valley as a field archaeologist,’Coops said, ‘nobody told me it’d be part of the Blore empire.’
    ‘But isn’t that, like . . . good?’
    ‘Goodnight, Jane,’ Neil Cooper said.

Bury them Deeper
     
    S HIRLEY W EST WAS , arguably, the most sinister person here. Shirley did foreboding in a way that was supposed to have gone out with the Witchcraft Act.
    Impressive in a born-again Christian.
    A couple in front of Merrily and Lol had slid away, leaving a clear view of Shirley in that grey, tubular, quilted coat. A lagged cistern with no thermostat, and sooner or later – you just knew – she was going to overheat.
    Directly ahead of her, at the front of the stage, two pictures were pinned to a display stand. One was a photo showing an empty field with a five-barred gate, the conical hill rising behind it under an overcast sky.
    ‘Coleman’s Meadow.’ James Bull-Davies tapped his pen on the photo. ‘Earmarked for development of what are described as executive dwellings – like these.’
    Tapping the picture below it: an architect’s sketch of a detached house with a double garage, token timber-framing, landscaped suburban gardens, under a blue-washed summer sky.
    ‘Field being within the village boundaries, therefore seen by county planners as acceptable