The Genesis Inquiry
Olly Jarvis
This edition produced in Great Britain in 2021
by Hobeck Books Limited, Unit 14, Sugnall Business Centre, Sugnall, Stafford, Staffordshire, ST21 6NF
www.hobeck.net
Copyright © Olly Jarvis 2021
This book is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in this novel are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Olly Jarvis has asserted his right under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the copyright holder.
A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-913-793-41-8 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-913-793-40-1 (ebook)
Cover design by Jem Butcher
www.jembutcherdesign.co.uk
Printed and bound in Great Britain
Created with Vellum
For all of us
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Epilogue
Note from the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Hobeck Advanced Reader Team
Hobeck Books – the home of great stories
Also by Olly Jarvis
A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.
Marcus Garvey
Chapter One
Northumberland, northeast coast of England
Ella knew how the wind played tricks, but she was sure she could hear a car approaching. She pulled back the curtain on the van’s side window and peered out into the darkness. She couldn’t see anything in the field. No one else was fool enough to camp in March a couple of miles from the swirling winter gales of the northeast coast.
Tyres crunching on gravel. The sound grew louder and she watched as twin beams illuminated the dry-stone wall that snaked down the path onto the site.
The car stopped briefly at the end of the lane, then crossed the field, pulling up alongside her van. The headlights were switched off. A man got out. Ella could tell he was in a suit but couldn’t make out his features in the darkness.
She watched him take his coat off the headrest and thrust his arms through the sleeves, battling with the buttons as the back and sides flapped and whooshed around him in the wind.
He squelched through the sodden ground towards the van, doing a kind of jig as if in a hopeless attempt to keep his shoes dry.
Ella moved away from the window, anxiety engulfing her.
There was a tap on the door.
She didn’t move.
‘Miss Blake?’ The voice was cockney. It sounded familiar. ‘Miss Blake, it’s me.’
‘Jim?’ The tension left her body. Why hadn’t she recognised her clerk? But then in all the years she’d know him, she’d never seen him hop over a waterlogged field in the dark.
‘Yes, ma’am, Jim Hodges.’
She slid open the door. ‘Jim, what the hell are you doing here?’
Jim opened his mouth as if to explain, then shut it again. ‘Can I come in, ma’am? It’s blowing a gale out here.’
‘Yes, of course, sorry, climb in.’
Jim stepped up into the van, falling sideways onto a leather seat. Ella pulled the sliding side door back into place then sat down on the other side of the pull-out table. ‘Have you just driven up from London?’
‘Yeah, took hours, bloody A1,’ he said, inspecting the muck on his shoes. ‘It was one lane half the time.’
The wind yawed around the van, pummelling the windows.
Ella opened a cupboard and pulled out a tumbler to accompany the one already on the table next to a half empty bottle of Courvoisier. She could feel Jim looking at the mud on her fleece.
‘Just a small one, got to drive back in a bit.’
Ella had already guessed why he’d come, but she wasn’t going to disappoint him before he’d even made himself comfortable.
‘It’s nice, cosy,’ said Jim, patting the seat. ‘But why…’ he paused. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, ma’am, why would a woman want to live alone in a van in the middle of nowhere when she’s got a house in Belgravia?’
Ella sipped at her brandy and shrugged. ‘Too many memories.’
He gave an awkward grimace. ‘Ah, of course, sorry.’
‘Nothing to apologise for.’ In a way, she was pleased people were starting to forget.
‘But what do you do all day?’ he asked, looking around at the books lined up on shelves behind an elastic strip.
‘Go for walks. Read. Think. Try and clear my head.’
‘Has it worked?’
Ella glanced away. ‘Not yet.’
Jim sat up straight. ‘Look, ma’am, I’ve known you for over twenty years. I’d like to think…’
She watched him struggle to maintain eye contact.
‘…we’ve become more than just a barrister and her clerk.’
‘Then stop calling me ma’am,’ Ella teased, remembering how he’d always stood by her, helped her become a QC, and had her back after it all happene
d.
‘Force of habit, ma’am. Er… I mean Ella.’ He blushed. ‘I know the young clerks use first names now.’
Ella reached across and gave him a reassuring pat on the wrist. ‘What is it, Jim? You’ve come a long way, let’s have it.’
He took a deep breath. ‘OK, here goes…’
Ella felt a wave of empathy for her old friend. He’d obviously been rehearsing his pitch all the way from London.
‘Ma’am, it’s been three years. It’s time to stop beating yourself up.’ He paused, then blurted, ‘Is this whole retirement thing because of the complaint?’
‘No.’ She took a swig. ‘Partly, I should never have come back so soon after—’
‘But you didn’t do anything wrong. You lost a case, so what?’
‘A case I should’ve won. I should never have been back at work.’ She stared him down. ‘I wasn’t in any fit state after…’
An awkward silence.
‘But you must be ready now? You need your work, ma’am.’
Ella scoffed. ‘I can’t.’
‘Why? You’re the best silk in England.’
‘Was,’ corrected Ella.
‘Why throw all that away? You’re not even fifty, it’s not too late to come back.’
Ella refilled her glass. ‘I just don’t give a shit anymore. That’s the problem.’ She took a large gulp of her drink. ‘You have to live and breathe the courtroom if you’re going to survive.’
‘But—’
‘No buts, Jim.’ She could tell by the look on his face that a barrister and clerk impasse had been reached. ‘Anyway, how did you know where to find me?’ asked Ella.
‘I didn’t. Lizzie guessed.’ He frowned. ‘Why don’t you ever answer your phone?’
‘No reception.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Jim’s voice was full of sarcasm. ‘Look…’ He took another deep breath. ‘I’ve got a job for you.’
‘I’ve just told you, I—’
‘Hear me out,’ Jim replied. ‘It’s not in the courtroom as such, it’s an inquiry.’
Ella felt stressed even talking about work. ‘What, like a government inquiry?’
‘Nothing so grand, I’m afraid, internal, in a university, some sort of discipline issue, I think. Pays well.’
‘Employment law?’ Ella let out a hollow laugh. ‘Haven’t done that since I was a junior. And you took the trouble to come all the way up here for that? I thought you’d at least try me with a public inquiry, or a murder, or even a celebrity libel job. Something a bit sexier.’
‘It’s easy money.’ Jim’s back stiffened as if readying to play his ace. ‘It’s in Cambridge.’
Ella fell silent.
‘Accommodation’s paid for.’ Then, in a hushed tone, he added, ‘It means you could spend—’
‘I know what it means.’ Ella bit her lip. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap.’ She took a sip. ‘You’re a good friend,’ she said with a faint slur. ‘I appreciate you coming all this way.’
‘Does that mean you’ll at least think about it?’
Ella managed a faraway smile. ‘Sure, I will. Now come outside while I have a smoke.’ She slid the door open and pulled a cigarette out of her pocket. ‘Wind’s eased off a bit.’
Once they were in the blackness, sheltering in the lee of the caravan from the biting coastal wind, she cupped the lighter and, after repeated attempts, sparked up.
‘Seeing you dressed like this takes some getting used to,’ said Jim, shivering beside her.
‘Don’t worry, got a two-piece and heels in the back of the van,’ she replied. ‘The old uniform.’ She took a drag then exhaled. ‘Look at that, constellation after constellation,’ she said, staring up at the night sky. ‘You won’t see anything like that in London.’
‘Jesus,’ said Jim. ‘Why are there so many?’
‘No light pollution around here.’
‘What the hell must people have thought, looking up at this thousands of years ago?’
‘That the sky held all the secrets? Yeah, makes you feel pretty insignificant,’ she replied.
They stood in silence, marvelling at the stars.
Chapter Two
The next day, Ella slid open the door and bathed her face in the morning sun. The wind blustered, delivering a crisp, farm-fresh fragrance.
Hiking and its solitude were the nearest Ella Blake came to a respite from her jagged memories. In the early days she’d tried to analyse what had happened from a lawyer’s perspective, objectively. But it had all become too much.
Now it was easier just to block everything out.
Thoughts of Jim’s visit swirled in her head as she sat on the metal step and pulled on her boots. It had been an uncomfortable reminder that she was going to have to face the world at some point. Weeks had turned into months and then years. She was already worried that her estrangement from the world she knew had reached the point of no return. She wasn’t just ring-rusty, the law had moved on. How could she navigate her way through the confrontations and subtleties of a crown court trial when she couldn’t even conduct a basic conversation with a stranger without feeling anxious?
She locked the van and set off along the footpath towards the sea. The campsite was only a few miles from the coast. She looked forward to the simple routine of her morning walk. The rain had stopped, but angry clouds still threatened. The wind was making her nose run and her ears sting. She pulled her woolly hat further down and strode up towards the brow of the hill. As she neared the top, the glorious view down to the coast and the island of Lindisfarne opened up before her.
The clouds began to break up, allowing light to glisten off the morning dew, lifting her melancholy mood on the walk down to the causeway. Ella knew the tide tables backwards, arriving by 10 a.m., just in time to watch her favourite spectacle – the sea receding and magically revealing the road to Holy Island. She crossed on the pedestrian path, marked out by poles spaced along the sand. Once she was on the other side, she followed the road along the shoreline past the signs for tourists showing pictures of four-by-fours that left it too late to go back across, sitting marooned on the causeway, seawater up to the windows. She cut across the dunes and Lindisfarne Castle came into view, perched on a twirling, grassy rock.
After she’d climbed the steps to the top of the castle, to a backing track of squawking gulls, she rested. She found the rhythm of the gulls’ unyielding wails soothing. From the top she could see for miles in every direction.
Looking out over the battlements, Ella could make out the distant shape of Bamburgh Castle on the mainland. She preferred the view below, of the island itself. She could see the remains of the ancient Priory in the village, a few hundred metres off. A surviving stone arch rose out of the remnants, framing the sky. This was a place that had always mattered to her, ever since childhood. She leaned over the battlements and stared out to sea, remembering her mother’s mystical history lessons about the first Viking raid on the British Isles, a clash of two cultures. Ella wondered what those priests had thought in AD 793 when they saw a fleet of strange ships on the horizon. A portent for centuries of conflict.
Heading back down, she spotted Rob, the young hippie tour guide, doing his speech to a couple of off-season tourists at the castle entrance. ‘Simeon of Durham recorded the terrible events,’ he announced with a pompous puffing out of his chest and what Ella suspected was a hamming up of his Geordie accent. ‘And they came to the church of Lindisfarne, laid everything waste with grievous plundering.’ He checked his notes, then continued his oration. ‘They killed some of the brothers, took some away with them in fetters… some they drowned in the sea…’
Ella made her way back towards the narrow stone staircase and along the shore past a couple of upturned rowing boats dragged high onto the beach into the marram grass. She breathed in the salty air and kicked a few stones off the path as she walked around the curved inlet. A couple of fishing boats sat listed and marooned by the tide on the wet sand, their chains dra
ped in seaweed.
Try as she might, she couldn’t seem to get Jim’s words out of her head. Images of the Cambridge colleges in her mind’s eye. She remembered her daughter’s excited phone call about getting in. A rare moment of connection. And deep down, part of her knew she needed a new challenge.
She ambled past the cluster of houses that surrounded the ruins of the Priory to the Inn with its low, beamed ceiling and exposed, stone walls. Inside a fire was already roaring in the huge hearth, ready for the first customer of the day.
‘Rum and coke, pet?’ asked the old man behind the bar. She realised for the first time that she’d never bothered to ask his name.
‘Double,’ she replied. She slid onto a stool, reached into the pocket of her tatty Barbour and took out her phone. Two bars. She pressed contacts and scrolled down to “Lizzie”. Her finger hovered over the screen for a moment, then pulled away. She pursed her lips.