The Lost Testament

17

‘I’ll be quite glad when I’ve finished this,’ Angela Lewis remarked, to nobody in particular.

‘I thought you liked being busy?’ the man standing almost opposite her on the other side of the long workbench asked.

Angela put down the magnifying glass she had been using to examine the badly crazed surface of a potsherd and rubbed her eyes.

‘I do, Charles,’ she replied, ‘but at the moment there’s just so much work piling up here that I simply can’t see the end of it. And, of course, with summer leave now virtually upon us, there isn’t anybody else I can ask to come and give me a hand. I’d love to be able to get out of here and look at something else for a few days.’

She gestured to the two large open cardboard boxes sitting close to her on the workbench. Her job as a ceramics conservator had always fascinated and infuriated her in almost equal measure. There were few feelings to compare with the profound sense of satisfaction she always found when she was able to reassemble a pot or a jar from a collection of shattered fragments. But every time she was presented with a new task, the feeling of frustration mounted.

Charles Westman grinned in acknowledgement at her words. His particular speciality was ancient weaponry, which only rarely involved the reassembly of anything. In fact, he was only in the laboratory to check that a Saxon sword that had recently been found in a field in East Anglia was being properly cleaned before preservation work started on the metal.

‘I thought you’d have had enough of gallivanting around the world tracking down ancient relics with that ex-husband of yours.’

‘I don’t think I’m away from the museum as much as you are, Charles. This is really only a part-time job for you, isn’t it?’

Westman nodded.

‘I’m fortunate in that respect, yes, my dear. I don’t actually have to work, but the job here is still useful for all sorts of reasons. But I think Chris Bronson — that is his name, isn’t it? — is a bad influence on you. Whenever he comes into the picture, things always seem to take a turn for the worse and you end up running for your life. Surely a bit of normality is a welcome change?’

Angela bridled slightly.

‘That’s as may be,’ she replied, ‘but one thing you can say about Chris is that time spent with him is never boring. Life-threatening, yes, occasionally, but boring, never. And this’ — she pointed again at the boxes of potsherds awaiting her attention — ‘is very definitely boring.’

Westman smiled at her. When Angela was in this kind of mood, he knew exactly which buttons to press to get a rise from her.

‘But you have to look on the bright side,’ he said. ‘Just think how pleased the museum will be when you’ve assembled another anonymous pot which they can put on a display alongside dozens of other anonymous pots. Every time you walk past it you’ll get a warm fuzzy feeling of tremendous satisfaction.’

Angela lowered the fragments of pottery to the workbench and glared at him.

‘If this relic wasn’t almost two thousand years old, and I hadn’t signed for the blasted thing, I’d be very much inclined to throw it at you,’ she snapped.

Westman’s smile grew broader.

‘Just winding you up, my dear, doing my bit to keep up your spirits. In fact, I really think you could do with a break before you start throwing things around and hurting people. Now, I’ve got nothing much to do for a while, so do you fancy a cup of coffee?’

‘Canteen or proper coffee out in the streets somewhere?’

Westman looked slightly insulted.

‘Proper, obviously. What kind of a man do you take me for?’

Angela snapped off the desk lights, stood up and eased her aching back.

‘You really don’t want me to answer that, do you, Charles? I’ve known you for too long,’ she teased, wondering, and not for the first time, about Westman’s personal circumstances.

He was unlike most of her other colleagues at the museum, who tended to be casually and comfortably scruffy. Westman was about six feet tall and slightly overweight, carrying just a few extra pounds, but always clean-shaven and immaculately dressed in a three-piece suit, a silk handkerchief in his breast pocket and his shoes buffed to a high shine. He wasn’t handsome in the conventional sense, his nose a little too big and slightly crooked, but with friendly grey eyes and a ready smile, and he had always been pleasant company.

In fact, Angela had a sneaking suspicion that he fancied her, which presumably meant he wasn’t gay as she’d first suspected, but he’d never made any overt move that could confirm this.

She took a last glance at the pottery crowded together on her workbench and shook her head.

‘At times like this,’ she said, ‘I almost wish I’d become a palaeontologist. At least they get to spend some of their time out in the field.’

Charles Westman shuddered elaborately.

‘Far too crude, my dear, all those bones and teeth and fossilized poo. And sunburn — if you’re lucky — and too much dirt under your fingernails. No, not really your style at all, I think.’

Just after they’d left the laboratory, Angela’s laptop computer emitted a musical tone. She’d received an email.