Free The Blood Pit by Kate Ellis Page A

reached for his jacket. His sister, Maritia, and her husband of almost a year, Mark, were eating with
     them that evening and Pam would be wondering what was keeping him. He thought of the hotel booking he’d made for their wedding
     anniversary on Saturday night and smiled to himself before looking through the list he had made of tomorrow’s tasks. But as
     he made for the door, he knew there was something he was missing … if only he had time to think what it was.
    Neil Watson was working late. The amateur diggers had knocked off at five, some keen to go, some reluctant, and now he was
     left with a couple of colleagues to clear up and make a quick assessment of that day’s finds. Neil sat in the cow shed cum
     site office, surrounded by black plastic buckets, trowels, mattocks and kneeling mats, staring at the stack of trays containing
     finds to be processed and washed.
    There had been one particularly interesting artefact – a small, thin piece of corroded metal, not much larger than a pen,
     encased in rust and earth. Neil had sent it off to be x-rayed, hoping that it might confirm his suspicions about the use of
     the site. A picture of Stow Barton’s past was starting to form in his mind, hazy and incomplete. But perhaps the letter was
     sending his thoughts in the wrong direction completely. He had to keep an open mind and follow the available evidence.
    The papers in front of him were smeared with mud – it was hard to keep the stuff out – and Neil searched through them, looking
     for the list of diggers. When he eventually found it, he stared at the names, wondering if one of them could be his mysterious
     letter writer.
    There were two professional archaeologists apart fromhimself – Diane Lowe and Barbara Smith. Then there were ten students working on the site, all of whom seemed to fit the profile
     of the species – more interested in drink, food and sex than tormenting the project supervisor with tales of monks and blood.
     There were two retired people – Muriel and Norman – who were taking part out of genuine interest and somehow didn’t seem the
     anonymous letter type. Muriel was a retired nurse and Norman had been a history teacher at some public school near Littlebury
     on the coast beyond Millicombe – nice professional people. Then there was a middle-aged housewife who was intending to study
     archaeology as a mature student. And there was Lenny.
    Lenny was what Neil’s mother would have described as a free spirit. He’d been everywhere. Done everything. Travelled in South
     America, joined a New Age commune in Neston, worked in a variety of jobs and had even had a book published. In Neil’s opinion,
     Lenny thought he knew it all and came out with some absolute crap with the certainty of holy writ. According to Lenny, Neil
     had got the site all wrong. It was on a ley line and the fact the building they were excavating was on a raised mound meant
     that it was a burial mound – an ancient ritual site, possibly linked with druid sacrifice.
    As the man was paying for the privilege of taking part in the dig, Neil had used all the tact he could muster to point out
     that the raised ground was a geological feature rather than a burial mound. But, in the face of the man’s determination, he
     didn’t bother to correct him a second time. Lenny also hadn’t liked the idea of the site being monastic – his preference being
     a hefty dose of pre-Christian mysticism.
    His thoughts were interrupted by a rustling sound, the movement of someone wearing a cagoule against the unpredictable Devon
     summer. ‘Neil. Can I have a word?’
    He looked up and saw his second-in-command on theproject, Diane Lowe, looking at him expectantly. She was small with curly dark hair and Neil had noticed that she was pretty.
    He pushed his list to one side and stood up. ‘Yeah, of course. What is it?’
    ‘Barbara’s gone home. She’s not feeling well.’
    Barbara was the other qualified archaeologist on