Clare lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I really don’t understand what’s going on now, Margaret. Why on earth would anyone go to the trouble of burying a whole collection of genuine finds, worth a fortune on the antiquities market, on an archaeological site that had police crawling all over it and then dig them up again? It doesn’t make any sense.’

Margaret drained the last few drops of her drink and replaced the glass firmly on the table. ‘Indeed it does not, my dear. But that is most definitely what appears to have happened.’

CHAPTER TEN

The walk from Temple Meads station to Bristol University’s archaeology department was considerably longer than Clare had remembered. She’d forgotten how steep the hills were in Bristol. And with the mid-morning sunshine beating down, she realised she’d significantly overestimated the beneficial effects of the odd bit of pickaxing now that she could no longer afford a gym subscription.

Trudging uphill, she tried to conjure some sort of sense out of what they’d discovered about the auction site objects. On the plus side, it might at least mean they were less likely to suffer raids from nighthawks. Though given that they had no clue why the objects had been planted on the site in the first place, much less why they’d been dug up again, they couldn’t even be certain about that. And it still left them with a substantial portion of their site that had already been wrecked.

She’d decided, and Margaret had agreed, that there was no point in involving the police. And, given the fact that David already knew someone had been digging holes in the site, there wasn’t much to be gained from telling him about what they’d discovered just yet. Anyway, what would they tell him? Someone had broken in, buried some of the most spectacular finds she’d ever seen and then taken them away again.

Whatever might have been going on at Bailsgrove, she was still no closer to knowing whether Beth had been right. Had it been the centre of some sort of cult before the Romans arrived? Or was it pure fantasy? Of course, there was still that dedication to Mercury. But when all was said and done, on its own it proved nothing. And if there had ever been any evidence of a shrine on the site, there was every possibility that their man in the car park or his supplier had put paid to any trace of it.