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Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

Titel: Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)
Autoren: Ann Cleeves
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in the Co-op, the difficult labour and the child who was pulled screaming into the world.

 
Chapter Four
     
    Hattie could have done without having Evelyn here at Setter at all today. They’d only been back in Whalsay for a week and she had other things to think about, anxieties that snagged at the back of her mind along with the moments of joy. Besides, she wanted to get on with the dig. Her dig, which had lain covered up since the autumn. Now the longer days and finer weather had brought her back to Shetland to complete the project. She itched to get back into the main trench, to continue the sieving and dating, to complete her meticulous records. She wanted to prove her thesis and to lose herself in the past. If she could prove that Setter was the site of a medieval merchant’s house, she would have an original piece of research for her PhD. More importantly, the discovery of artefacts dating the building and confirming its status would give her grounds to make a funding application to extend the excavation. Then she would have an excuse to stay in Shetland. She couldn’t bear the idea that she might be forced to leave the islands. She didn’t think she could ever live in a city again.
    But Evelyn was a local volunteer and she needed training and Hattie needed to keep her on side. Hattie knew she didn’t handle volunteers well. She was impatient and expected too much from them. She used language they had no hope of understanding. Today wouldn’t be easy.
    They’d woken again to sunshine, but now a mist had come in from the sea, filtering the light. Mima’s house was a shadow in the distance and everything looked softer and more organic. It was as if the surveying poles had grown from the ground like willows and the spoil heap was natural, a fold in the land.
    The day before, Sophie had marked out a practice trench a little way off from the main site and dug out the turf. She’d exposed roots and a patch of unusually sandy, dry soil and levelled the area with a mattock so the practice dig could begin. The topsoil had been dumped on the existing spoil heap. Everything was ready when Evelyn turned up at ten, just as she’d said she would, wearing corduroy trousers and a thick old sweater. She had the anxious, eager-to-please manner of a pupil sucking up to the teacher. Hattie talked her through the process.
    ‘Shall we make a start then?’ Hattie knew Evelyn was enthusiastic, but really the woman should be taking this more seriously, making notes for example. Hattie had gone through the methods of recording a site in some detail, but she wasn’t sure Evelyn had taken it all in. ‘Do you want to have a go with the trowel, Evelyn? We wouldn’t sieve everything in a site like this, though we might work it through the flotation tank, and every find would need to be set in context. You do understand how important that is?’
    ‘Yes, yes.’
    ‘And we work from the known to the unknown so we always trowel backwards. We don’t want to tread on the things we’ve already uncovered.’
    Evelyn looked up at her. ‘I might not be working for a PhD,’ she said, ‘but I’m not daft either. I have been listening.’ It was gently said but Hattie felt herself blushing. I’m no good with people , she thought. Only with objects and ideas. I understand how the past works but not how to live with people in the present.
    The older woman squatted in the trench and began to scratch tentatively with the trowel, beginning in one corner, scraping away the upper layer of soil, reaching up to tip it into the bucket.
    She frowned like a child concentrating on routine homework. Over the next half hour, whenever Hattie glanced across to her, there was the same expression on her face. Hattie was just about to check on Evelyn’s work when the older woman called over to her.
    ‘What’s this?’
    Hattie stretched and went to see. Something solid was revealed against the lighter colour of the sandy soil and the particles of shell. Hattie was excited despite herself. This was a fragment of pottery perhaps. Imported pottery would give the house the status she hoped for. They’d dug the practice trench away from the excavated dwelling precisely because they didn’t want the amateurs to come across any sensitive finds, but perhaps they’d stumbled across a midden, even an extension to the house itself. She crouched beside Evelyn, almost pushing her away, and brushed the soil away from the revealed object. It was not pottery,
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