“Ma’am, the Sergeant do be right. This have strange and suspicious written all over it. I don’t be knowing many of the details, but I tell you this. The buildner do be from out of town, not, so I did hear, even from anywhere in Shoatshire. None of the workers was from Silbury. They was brought in every day from somewhere else, I don’t know where. There do be three estate agents in Silbury, and none of them was handling the sales, only some firm I never heard of before.
“That be all I can say. I know not who is the buyers. It would be informative though to be knowing about mortgages and stuff like that.”
Three years later, in 1969, Silbury remains fundamentally the same as it was: a small town in the west of England with a broad High Street, a major independent school, five banks, eleven public houses, and a police station led by Inspector Fatima Dieng. But, as we first discovered in Silbury 1966, this small town stubbornly refuses to live up to its sleepy reputation.
Aspects of the completion and sale of houses on a new affluent estate raise suspicions among Fatima and her friends. But do they actually warrant official police attention?
There is a spate of vandalism in the town, raising the ire of some prominent citizens, as well as highlighting problems faced by young people, and deeper social issues.
In the course of what was supposed to be a pleasant outing to Sarum racecourse, Fatima and her friends are witness to two suspicious deaths, with significant repercussions back in Silbury.
As Fatima’s daughter enters her final year at Silbury Grammar School, the Headmistress is rushed to Forest Hospital with a mystery illness, a suspicious package is discovered in the school’s staffroom, and two of its leading teachers are the subject of homophobic abuse.
And towards the end of the year, Fatima is the subject of multiple attacks, both physically and through the press, and she almost loses her life.
Is there a common thread behind this strange series of events?
“All the horses were now in, and the gates suddenly sprang open. Fatima took the binoculars from her eyes, as it was too difficult to follow progress, which was very swift, at that degree of magnification. Queen’s Ransom seemed to take an early lead and was leaving the field behind. In less that a minute the horses were approaching the finish line with Queen’s Ransom well in the lead. And then all of a sudden everything changed.”
“Fatima turned to watch them as they ran away. What a strange encounter, she thought. Then she turned back, and suddenly there was a loud bang and a flash in front of her and a horrendous pain in her chest. As she fell to the ground, she lost consciousness, but she did also recall another sound coming through the fog of her brain. It was like a police whistle.”
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