I drove out to Pebble Deeping the following lunchtime, the comfort of my bed proving too much for my new early morning regime.

I wound down all the windows in my Beetle and turned my tape deck up high, blasting Guns N' Roses out across the country lanes, enjoying both the music and the gust of air ruffling my hair.

As I passed through the village, I saw Dr. Martha Wimple coming out of the Post Office-cum-general store with some groceries in her arms. Taking advantage of this fortuitous happening, I slowed to a crawl and pulled up next to her on the pavement.

"Can I give you a lift home?" I bellowed, trying in vain to out-do Axel Rose. She ducked and peered through the window, beaming when she saw me.

"Sure, Satchmo," she said. I opened the door for her and turned the music down. "Cool car," she giggled at me bopping along to the rhythm in the driver's seat.

"All the chicks dig a classic," I made the Beetle drivers' recognition hand signal, and she laughed.

Having checked out the first of the possible avenues with my research on Michaels, here was a chance to pursue the other outstanding line of enquiry.

"I have been meaning to ask you something..." I tapped out the beat to Paradise City as I drove through the village.

"Of course, Satchmo," Martha replied.

"Who knew about your father's work? More specifically; who could have known that he might have found the gold?" I asked.

I took a quick glance at her out of the corner of my eye. She had one arm out of the window and the breeze was blowing a stray strand of her hair about like a pennant. She blinked rapidly with the wind in her eyes and I had to swallow hard and remind myself to look at the road.

Take me down to the Paradise City, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty...

"Well," she answered. "Everyone who knew my father's work also knew his theory. He made sure of that! Let's see; his colleagues at the university, his students, anyone who read his articles in the journals," she counted the groups off on her fingers.

"He didn't have any enemies? No cases of academic jealousy?" I probed a little.

"Enemies!" she laughed. "No, my father had no enemies and his colleagues saw him as a laughing-stock. He was an eccentric to be humoured, not envied." She said bitterly, tucking the errant strand of hair behind her ear.

"You want to know who had the knowledge and motive to kill my father for the gold?" she said. I could see her chewing her bottom lip in my peripheral vision. It could be concentration in thought, could be a nervous tic.

"Yup," I nodded.

"Then you seriously believe he might have been murdered for some archaeological relics?" she sounded incredulous.

"It exists as a possibility," I said, continuing to tap the steering wheel.

Oh, won't you please take me home?

"Why haven't the police raised this, then?" Martha demanded.

"Come off it, do you want the authorities involved? There is no real evidence, no suspect and now no motive. There was nothing obviously suspicious about the death of your father. If they took an interest, and the artefacts were found before you turned up your father's papers, who would get the glory? The academic kudos? Not you or your father," I said, stepping through the logic without thinking about how it sounded.

"Are you suggesting that I did not contact the police to ensure I could save professional face?" Martha snapped indignantly. Colour had risen to her cheeks and there was a bolt of lightning in her vivid green eyes.

I thought carefully for a moment. That was precisely what I was suggesting, but I didn't really want to say so. What would she think of me?

"Yes. That's what I am suggesting," I said. It just kind of slipped out.

Martha was silent, she looked at me briefly. I steadfastly watched the road.

I wanna go, I wanna go, oh won't you please take me home?

As we neared her cottage, she broke the silence with a sigh. "You are right to a degree. I don't believe my father was murdered. If I had even had the faintest inkling that he had been, I would have gone straight to the police. But I didn't report the break in. I do want to find my father's papers, and the votives," she said with a note of resignation in her voice. The flush in her cheekbones remained but the anger in her eyes had gone.

"To prove he was right?" I suggested gently.

"Yes, it's an academic conceit. I was the child in the playground who does something she shouldn't because the other children are so convinced it can't be done," she explained.

I wasn't sure I followed, but then she was the one with the PhD.

I stopped outside her cottage, put the bug in neutral and turned in my seat to face her.

"I didn't mean to be rude," I apologized. It was a little late for back-peddling.

"Not at all, Satchmo. I like a person who speaks their mind." As she said this, I grinned like the Cheshire cat, then another thought struck me.

"Have you ever heard of a man called Martin Michaels Jnr.?" I asked.

She was silent a while.

"No," she finally replied. Yes, I thought.

"Were you aware of anyone offering to buy Holly Cottage from your father?" I pressed.

"No, my father would never have sold it. Not when it was so close to the site for which he had been searching for decades," Martha responded adamantly.

Again, there was a brief and involuntary nibble on her lower lip.

"If you are visited by two men who blot out the sun, or anyone threatens you in any way, call us immediately," I said, handing her my card which had my mobile number printed along the bottom. She looked at me as if I was mad.

"Who is this Michaels? Is he dangerous?" she whispered, locking my eyes with her gaze.

"Maybe. He is a property developer. He's trying to get his hands on land in Pebble Deeping, including Ty's farm and your cottage," I replied.

Martha looked at my card, then tucked it into her purse.

"Would you like to come up to the farm for lunch sometime? I catch a tasty fish," I offered. Nothing ventured.

She gave me a quizzical look before gathering her groceries and climbing out of the car.

"Maybe I will, Satchmo," she said, swinging the door closed with a clunk.

With that, she was gone.

*

I put the shopping on the kitchen table.

"Tea bags, three loaves of bread, apples, oranges, pork chops, onions..." I rummaged a bit further "... Grapefruit cordial (low sugar), four tins of tuna, a bulb of garlic..."

"Did you get what I asked you to?" Edge interrupted.

"Yes. Here you go; three packets of red flavour jelly, not the powdered kind, fuse wire and a packet of six-inch nails."

Ty's face lit up as he picked up the dessert. "Excellent! I suppose supermarkets have their uses after all," he beamed at me.

"What have you been doing while I was away?" I asked.

"Well, we now have electricity. The toilet works, and I fixed a little something up for you," he replied. I dreaded to think what that might be.

"Nothing about the gold, or Michaels?" I enquired.

"You don't keep a dog and bark yourself, Satchmo."

Good point, I thought. I filled him in on Michaels and my conversation with Martha.

"It would seem that Michaels is our man. We know he has history, we know he threatened my uncle and us, we know he keeps those thugs to do his dirty work," he pondered aloud.

I nodded while he spoke. "We also know he wants to acquire this land, and Martha's, to complete the lot for his latest deal," I chimed in.

"But there are problems. Things that don't fit," Ty voiced my own concerns.

"Why kill Jonah? Why break into Holly Corner looking for something?" I said.

"The break-in at Martha's may have been to scare her father so that he felt unsafe staying in the village, maybe make him worry about the safety of his daughter. Perhaps the intruder wasn't searching the place but trashing it..." I was just thinking out loud. "... But killing Jonah?"

"Well, it certainly is a puzzle, Satchmo. Let me know when you have sorted it all out," Ty yawned.

"You mentioned fixing something up for me?" I asked, playing along with his boyish enthusiasm.

"Yes, come on I'll show you."

He led the way out of the farmhouse to the old barn. The floor was weed-specked dirt, pocked here and there with some rusted farm machinery. Ty pointed to the far wall against which leaned a newly fabricated ladder giving access to the barn's hayloft.

"The stairs to your quarters," he said, a look of satisfaction etched onto his face.

I looked at him quizzically.

"You can't keep staying in the same room as me, besides it will give you something to do," he explained.

I climbed the ladder and saw that Ty had installed a skylight into the roof of the hayloft and that a pile of planks lay in the corner.

"Once you've patched up the floor, you can do what you like with it. Make yourself comfortable," he called up at me.

I'd never wielded a hammer in anger in my entire life.

"What am I supposed to do?" I muttered under my breath.

"It's all very straightforward. I'll get you started, then it's up to you," He chided me.

We spent an hour planking up some gaps in the floor of the hayloft. He taught me how to saw and plane the planks until they fit the holes caused by the original wood rotting or breaking through. Once the plank fitted, I hammered it to the supporting joists with six-inch nails. We had covered maybe half of the voids when Ty rose to leave.

"What are you up to?" I asked him.

"I've got jelly to make," he replied as he vanished down the ladder.

I spent another two hours finishing the work; by which time I had suffered several splinters and had a large blister on my thumb. Still, I had done a good job, if I do say so myself. The floor of the hayloft was whole once more and I surveyed my handiwork, feeling a sense of pride that I had built something. The last thing I had constructed was a papier maché head in junior school, and that had resembled Quasimodo's less-attractive brother.

I was contemplating how I could turn the space into something more hospitable when Ty reappeared carrying my old rucksack.

"Your bag was beeping and vibrating," he informed me.

My mobile had rung, and I had a missed call. It was a local number, which must have been Martha. My heart gave a little flutter as I called her back. Maybe she wanted that lunch after all.

It rang twice before it was picked up and I heard Martha's voice.

"Hello?" her tone conveyed fear; abrupt, timid. "Who is it?"

"What's wrong, Martha?" I asked, suddenly concerned.

"Oh, it's you, Satchmo," she said, clearly relieved. "I'm sorry to trouble you like this, but I have had a series of worrying calls."

"We will be right round, don't answer the phone again," I said.

Edge gave me a raised eyebrow after I had hung up.

"Someone's been putting the frighteners on Martha. It seems like they have done a good job."

*

We sat in Martha's now familiar study. She had her hands clasped together in her lap and was shaking almost imperceptibly.

"They called four times, each time there was no voice but some recorded noises; wolves howling, women screaming, that sort of thing."

"And nothing was said?" I asked.

"No," she replied, trying to put a brave face on, but still seeming a little jumpy. I looked across at Ty, his face was clouded with a dark expression, and he pursed his lips slightly.

I broke eye contact, lost in thought, as my gaze swept across the clutter of pictures, framed embroidery and other assorted knick-knacks adoring the walls. Something odd caught my eye. It was a photo on the wall of two men, dressed in shorts and bush shirts and looking newer that its surrounding objects to the tune of many decades. One of the men in the image carried a large walking stick and was wearing a small camouflage backpack. Both men looked at home among the trees that surrounded them.

"Is that your father?" I asked, pointing.

"Yes, and Ty's uncle. They were on one of their walks, looking for artefacts," Martha smiled at the memory.

"Around the village?" I asked.

"Yes, that's in Hunter's Wood, just east of the fort mound," she replied.

"Hunter's Wood?" Ty said, sounding perplexed. "Never heard of it."

"Oh, that's right," Martha smiled, her brow creasing and nose wrinkling a little in thought. She appeared glad of the distraction. "The locals call it Milk Wood."

Something in my brain clicked, like a key turning a lock.

"What?" I blurted.

"Milk Wood, the boundary backs onto Ty's property," she explained.

Milk Wood...Milk Wood! Of course, I knew it rang a bell. They were both looking at me.

"BUGGERALL!" I exclaimed. "No space!"

Martha's face showed barely disguised bemusement.

"The clues Morgan left for you, Ty. BUGGERALL!" I shouted. Still, their faces registered no indication of understanding.

"Yes, I remember, what has that got to do with anything?" Ty appeared frustrated.

"What is 'BUGGERALL' backwards?" I asked, explaining it.

"Llareggub," Ty mouthed the word awkwardly. "What is that? A Welsh village?" he sounded it out again slowly, trying to make sense of it.

"Nearly. It is the fictional setting for a play by Welsh poet and author Dylan Thomas," I said, smiling my toothiest smile and remembering teenage years of attempting to appear cleverer than I was by reading things that I didn't fully understand.

"So?" Martha chimed in.

"The play is called Under Milk Wood." I stood and crossed the room, lifting the framed photo off the wall and turning it over. The back of the frame was firmly taped down, but the seal looked to be fresh and far newer than the faded cardboard that held the photo in place.

Understanding spread across Ty's face. From out of nowhere his wooden-handled knife was in his hand, and he was offering it to me. I slit the tape on the back of the frame and pulled the cardboard away. Behind the photo were several sheets of tightly folded paper.

"Your father's missing documents," I said, handing them to Martha with a face like the recent winner of a smugness competition.

"Bravo, Satchmo! Perhaps you are not as much of a waste of money as Joan thought," Ty remarked.

She had said that? I would have to have a word with her when I saw her, but right now I was feeling just too pleased with myself to be annoyed.

Martha delicately unfolded the sheets, smoothing each on her thigh.

"Yes, it's my father's diary..." she said, smiling. "... And this is his site map!" she held up a piece of schematic paper that had the layout of what I assumed was a Roman fort sketched on it.

"Oh my..." she said after a moment of having studied every page.

"What is it?" Ty asked.

"Well, according to his site map, he had extensively excavated the area. Here are the cross trenches," she ran a fingernail across the diagram. "These markings show where he had dug specific pits."

"Morgan must have helped him," Ty said.

"Maybe Jonah lent a hand with some of the work too. Did he find anything?" I asked her as she was scanning the pages that had been ripped out of the journal.

"Yes. The usual stuff; clay pots, a few coins, javelin shafts. That kind of thing." Her eyes flicked across the tight lines of scrawled notes.

"No gold?" I asked.

"No votives," she replied.

"Don't you think he might have mentioned it if they had been found? It would have made the newspapers," Ty said.

"Wait a minute..." Martha cross-checked something between the diagram and the pages of the journal.

"There is a site marked on the diagram that my father doesn't record having excavated," she said triumphantly.

"So, the gold could still be out there?" I said.

"It's possible," Martha replied, having dropped all signs of her earlier fear over the weird phone calls. Now she was excited, her face shone, and her eyes sparkled.

"When do we start?" she said.

"Start what?" I asked.

"Excavating the last site of course, silly!" she giggled, her choice of words made her seem even younger. "Will you help me?" she implored.

She could have asked me to move the whole fucking mound a metre to the right using only a teaspoon and I'd have been falling over myself to do it.

"Of course," I replied.

"Hold on a second there, Indiana Jones," said Ty, who had stayed pretty quiet up to that point.

"Don't forget that some unpleasant things have happened to those who go digging for gold. What about the phone calls, Martha?"

She looked at him, their eyes locked together.

"I will dig this last site out," she said, determined.

"The site is on my land, correct?" Ty replied, deadpan. Martha held his gaze and nodded. "Then you will need my permission to do that. I think that my permission will require you to come and stay at the farm for the duration," he said insistently, his tone did not suggest any scope for negotiation.

"Give me a few minutes to get some things," Martha said, scurrying out of the study.

"Are you OK with this, Ty?" I asked when she had gone. "After all, you're not paying me to find some mouldy artefacts."

"Well, it seems that in this case all roads lead to Rome," he answered, looking pleased with himself.

"Very funny," I replied.

"Besides, Morgan was involved in trying to find this stuff. He left the clue to the Professor's documents."

"There is the possibility that Michaels found out about the gold somehow. Now he's attempting to scare us off the land it is buried on, while he tried to get the information about the dig from Martha," I said.

"Hmm, that's possible. Now we know that the stuff Morgan left was not worthless," Ty stood and began to inspect the other framed pictures on the wall of the study.

"The postcard and newspaper?" I remembered.

"Exactly. He was trying to tell me something," Ty said, deep in thought, his hands thrust deeply into his pockets.

"Tell you what?" Martha had returned, she was wearing a small backpack, the straps tight across her shoulders and accentuating the curve of her chest.

She had a baseball cap pulled snugly down on her head, her ponytail bobbing through the gap above the strap. She looked like a perky undergraduate about to set off on a field trip.

"Oh, it's nothing," Ty said.

"OK then boys, let's go!" she said, marching out of the door.

Ty and I glanced at each other and raised a mutual eyebrow, before following her back to the farm.

*

Late that evening I was sitting in the hayloft, my legs swinging over the edge of the ten-foot drop. I had the huge double doors wide open, letting the sweet night air fill the barn.

It was a cloudless night and, from where I sat, I could see a strip of sky under the lintel, and a large swathe through the skylight above me. The sunset was the colour of a week-old bruise. The first stars were coming out and the night was silent.

Ty had installed Martha in the bedroom of the farmhouse, so once again we were to share a sleeping space, though I would hardly notice in the vastness of the hayloft. She had spent the evening with him; rummaging through the back of the Land Rover while inspecting Ty's tools to make sure they were up to archaeological standards.

Ty had even found a wooden framed camp bed that she could sleep on. No cold hard floor for her.

I was jealous.

Not of the camp bed, but of her spending time with Ty. I felt very childish, but correctly diagnosing that one is being childish does nothing to stop one feeling that way. I even began to wonder if he had advised against me becoming attached to Martha because he wanted her for himself. This train of thought made me feel worse than ever.

I had tried to devise ways to avoid sorting out the hayloft in order to spend more time with her, but in the end, I had given up hoping that she might notice my absence more than she noticed my presence.

So far, the plan was not working.

I had mixed feelings about her being at the farm. It seemed clear that she would be safer here with us, but then if someone was out to harm us maybe their job was easier now that we were all together. More than that, I wanted her to be here. I wanted to be around her, but at the same time I realized that it would not do my emotional welfare any good. Her only thought seemed to be of finding the lost votive sword and shield. I was more worried about whoever else was looking for them locating us first.

Ty walked through the open doors, a bowl in his hand. He was stripped to the waist and his hard body was beaded with sweat. For a second an image of him being with Martha flashed across my mind; entwined on the camp bed in a tangled embrace. I quickly cursed myself and forced it away.

"Hey, Satchmo!" said Ty. "Would you like some jelly?"

Jelly? Was the super-macho Ty really offering me jelly?

"It's good for the soul," he said.

I nodded in the darkness and dropped down the ladder. He handed me a spoon, and we sat out in the meadow looking at the silvery crescent moon that hung above us.

"Satchmo, you must try to focus on the job," he said quietly. Our cutlery clinked as we both scooped at the bowl.

"I'm trying, boss," I said, tugging my forelock sarcastically. Ty slurped his dessert noisily in response.

"Whoa there! No need for that. Women can materially affect the judgement of some men," he replied at length.

A little flame of anger suddenly leaped up within me.

"You want her for yourself!" I snapped vehemently. It kind of slipped past my lips before my conscience could get a grip on it.

Ty laughed then looked at me. "Oh, you weren't joking... Satchmo, you do not have to worry, I have no intention of battling you for the affections of Dr. Martha Wimple. Be it before, during or after the conclusion of all this business," he said placidly.

"I see," I replied, feeling a little foolish.

"I thought you might have a little more trust in me," he said, twisting the knife.

"I'm sorry," I said, and at that moment I was.

"Even if I was attracted to her, I wouldn't step on the toes of a friend. Even if that friend should know better than to mix business with pleasure," Ty smiled.

I had another spoon of the jelly and felt happier. Perhaps Ty was right; it was good for the soul.