‘Alan White’s body being found? Yes. David told me first thing.’
‘I saw him last night. Bad-tempered bloke, isn’t he?’
‘He reminds me of you.’
‘You’re joking.’ Nelson sounds positively appalled. Clearly, Ruth has hit a nerve.
‘What do you want, Nelson?’
‘Could you meet me at Black Dog Farm after work?’
‘I have to pick up Kate.’
‘I thought she had a rehearsal after school. For Scrooge.’ Why has Nelson chosen today to remember Kate’s schedule? And why does he want her to go to the spooky farmhouse again?
‘I just want you to show me where you saw the dog stuff,’ says Nelson. ‘It’s not a big deal. It’ll just be you and me.’
‘I can’t stay long,’ says Ruth.
Tanya decides to drive straight to Greenhill Comprehensive School. She’s irritated by the thought that she might have missed something when she spoke to the headteacher the first time. She’d liked Steph Brice over the phone, had thought she sounded organised and no-nonsense. Is it possible that she let this cloud her judgment?
Greenhill is a large collection of low-lying buildings linked by walkways. It reminds Tanya of the UEA campus where she has sometimes attended classes and meetings. She thinks the university was built in the sixties and this has the same air of having been modern and cutting-edge once. Now these buildings look distinctly the worse for wear. There are boarded-up windows and places where ornamental tiles have fallen off, leaving patches of exposed brick. The car park reveals a number of potholes and the flowers optimistically planted in the window boxes all seem to be dead.
Steph meets Tanya in reception and leads the way to her office. On the way they pass displays of students’ work, posters for plays and sporting events, even the odd trophy or two. The infrastructure may be failing, thinks Tanya, but the school isn’t. Marriage to Petra has taught her a little about these things.
The head’s office is a comfortable and welcoming place. Tanya can’t imagine pupils being scared of being sent to Ms Brice. Not that she’s a pushover, though. In person she seems very much as she did on the phone, friendly but professional. She’s about Tanya’s age, mid-thirties, which seems young to be a headteacher.
‘I heard about Alan,’ says Steph as they sit down. ‘What an awful thing to happen.’
‘Did you work with Alan?’ asks Tanya. ‘I think you said you did.’
‘Yes. I’ve been here five years. Alan retired three years ago. As I said on the phone, he was a popular teacher. We had a big party when he left. Lots of former students sent messages and cards.’
‘Paul Noakes was one of his ex-pupils, wasn’t he?’
‘He was. I looked him up when you mentioned him. Alan taught Paul for GCSE and A level history. Paul was one of Alan’s best pupils, I understand. He went on to study history at Bristol.’
‘And there was never any suggestion that Alan had an inappropriate relationship with Paul?’
Steph sounds irritated now, a teacher whose class had tried her patience too far.
‘As I told you when you asked before, there was never any allegation of inappropriate conduct. Our safeguarding procedures are very strict. Alan was a popular teacher and a responsible one. If he formed friendships with former pupils after they left school, that’s a very different matter.’
‘It’s a bit unusual though, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe,’ says Steph. ‘But I understand that Alan and Paul mostly socialised through their mutual interest in archaeology.’
‘And what about Neil Topham? Did you work with him too?’
‘No. Neil had left before I started.’ Steph’s voice, so warm when talking about Alan, cools several degrees. ‘He left for medical reasons.’
‘Medical reasons?’
‘Some sort of breakdown, I believe. I think there was also some suggestion that he had let his pupils down academically. Taught them the wrong coursework. Something like that. As I say, it was before my time.’
And you don’t want to talk about it, thinks Tanya. She remembers Neil in his posh kitchen, being ignored by his kids. She can imagine him getting his coursework muddled up.
‘What about Nathan Matthews and Mark Hammond?’ she says. ‘I mentioned them on the phone too. Did Alan teach them?’
‘The two police officers? Yes, I looked through the records. Alan taught both of them. They were in the same year and very close friends, apparently.’
‘Did they know Paul Noakes? He was in the year above, wasn’t he?’
‘I asked Barry McNair, one of our older staff members, who remembers all three boys,’ says Steph. ‘Nathan and Mark weren’t friends with Paul as far as he knew. In fact, he remembered that Mark and Paul had once had a fight.’
‘Really?’ says Tanya. ‘What did they fight about?’
‘Barry couldn’t quite remember but he thought it was about a girl.’
It usually is, thinks Tanya.
Chapter 24
Ruth thinks that Nelson looks tired. She supposes that he was called out in the middle of the night when Alan White’s body was found. According to David, Cathbad ‘had him on speed dial’. Why is David so hostile to Cathbad? And to Nelson too, for that matter.
For all his tiredness, Nelson still seems full of energy. He’s pacing around the yard when Ruth turns up. It’s a windy day and leaves are blowing across the concrete. On the roof of the house, the black weather vane is spinning.
‘What’s going to happen to the house now?’ says Ruth.
‘It’s left to the children, Paul and Chloe. I suppose they’ll sell it. I can’t imagine either of them wanting to live here.’
‘No, I can understand that. I suppose it might be hard to sell though if people associate it with a murder.’
‘There was a suspicious death here before that,’ says Nelson. ‘A woman fell into a combine harvester. There were rumours that her husband pushed her.’
‘Jesus,’ says Ruth, ‘no wonder the place has an atmosphere.’
‘I’ve got a picture of the combine harvester couple,’ says Nelson. ‘They owned a large dog.’
Ruth looks at him. ‘Do you think that could be the dog that’s buried in the garden?’
‘It’s a possibility, wouldn’t you say? The dog looks to be a Doberman, a big one. Can you identify the dog breed from the skeleton?’
‘I could ask a zoo-archaeologist. Or a vet.’
‘Could you? I’d like to know.’
‘Shall I show you where we saw the dog the other day?’
‘Yes, but I want to check something in the house first. Do you mind?’
It’s strictly a rhetorical question because Nelson has already headed off towards the house. Ruth follows him. She doesn’t want to go inside but she doesn’t want to be outside on her own either.
The front door has been boarded up. Ruth wonders whether police had to break it down when they first entered the house. Police tape forms a forbidding X. Nelson, though, goes to a side entrance. He opens the door with a key. It’s on his own fob which Ruth knows has a picture of his daughters attached to it. His two older daughters. It’s one of the things that never fails to give her a stab of pain.
The door leads directly into a kitchen. It’s one of the most depressing rooms that Ruth has ever seen: yellow lino, old pine cabinets, walls discoloured with grease. Yet it could be a charming country kitchen with a little effort – there are beams, a scarred oak table, an Aga. Maybe whoever buys the house will give it a makeover. At the moment, though, it’s not just the outdated furnishings, it’s the sense of sadness and dread that hangs over the space, floating in the dust motes and hovering in the air that smells of old cooking and something far more sinister. There’s a brownish stain on the floor. Ruth hopes that it isn’t blood. Even more chilling are the signs of rece
nt habitation, a newspaper left open on the table and a cup beside it, now full of mould. Ruth supposes that the SOCO team will have examined these and then left them in place. She wonders whether Paul and Chloe have been into this room.
But Nelson doesn’t seem to notice any of this. He strides over to a noticeboard where a Guide Dogs calendar hangs by a pin.
‘Bingo,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘We think that Jem Taylor, our body on the beach, may have been doing illegal drugs trials for Douglas Noakes. He wasn’t on the records at Noakes’s research company but he’s here on the calendar. “J. Taylor Tuesday 17th 2pm.” Jesus, that was probably the day he died. His body was found in the early hours on Wednesday. And look what’s below him. “N. Matthews 8pm.” That was the young policeman who died suddenly. He died on the Thursday.’
‘And you think they died because the drugs trials went wrong?’
‘It’s certainly a possibility. There’s a room in this house that’s all done up like a doctor’s surgery. Creepiest thing you’ve ever seen. I think Douglas Noakes was seeing his guinea pigs here. Funny, really, because he didn’t let his children have guinea pigs. His daughter said he hated animals.’
‘Then why did he have a calendar with dogs on it?’
‘Very good, Ruth. I’ll make a police officer of you yet.’
There are many replies that Ruth could make to this but, typically, Nelson doesn’t wait to hear them. Nelson takes the calendar off the wall, folds it and puts it in his pocket. Obviously he’s having no truck with keeping it sterile. Then he heads for the door without looking round. Ruth has no choice but to follow him. It’s a relief to breathe in the gusty air after the fetid staleness of the kitchen.
‘Now,’ says Nelson, almost sniffing the air like a bloodhound. ‘Where did you see this dog stuff?’
‘In the barn at the front of the house.’
‘Let’s go, then.’
The double doors are still bolted shut but, as they skirt the wooden building, they see the back door propped open by a bucket.
‘Was this there last time?’ says Nelson, kicking it to one side.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. I can’t remember.’
All she remembers is that she and David had left the barn very hastily. They had gone straight to their cars and driven away. She had almost been too scared to look in her driving mirror.
Now, with Nelson, she feels safer. He has a proper torch with him, not just a phone, and it sweeps the gloomy space like a searchlight. Ruth sees the ladder, the dinghy and the dog’s bed and feeding bowl. This time there’s food in the bowl.
‘Looks like we’re expecting company,’ says Nelson.
Ruth looks around. Is that something moving in the shadows? She realises that she has moved closer to Nelson. He looks down at her. ‘Don’t worry, Ruth. I won’t let the Black Shuck get you.’
‘I’m not worried,’ says Ruth. But she is, slightly. She likes dogs but she has never owned one. Deep down, she prefers cats. She doesn’t want to face a devil hound with red eyes.
Nelson has moved across to the dinghy.
‘Was this here last time?’
‘Yes. I think so.’
Nelson squats down. ‘There’s seaweed on it. Did you notice if it was there last week? It’s dry but it doesn’t look brittle.’
‘I didn’t notice.’ In all honesty, Ruth had only given the boat a cursory glance. But now she understands what Nelson is thinking.
‘Do you think that the man on the beach . . . Jem . . . died here and his body was taken out to sea?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Nelson, who is taking pictures of the boat. ‘But I’d like to know how old this seaweed is.’
‘My mum used to say that you could tell the weather from seaweed,’ says Ruth, remembering. Her mother hadn’t actually explained how the algae had managed to perform this trick. It was, like so many of her mother’s statements, inexplicable and unanswerable.
‘That sounds like the sort of thing my mum would say,’ says Nelson.
Having met Maureen, Ruth can believe this. Kate says that Nelson’s mother is coming for Christmas. She doesn’t seem to realise that this mythical being is also her only living grandmother.
Ruth is about to say something about mothers, grandmothers and their sayings when she hears a noise outside. Nelson has heard it too. He comes to her side.
There’s a snuffling sound by the door and, a minute later, a large black shape enters the barn. At the same time, a gust of wind bangs the door shut.
They are locked in with the devil dog.
Nelson steps towards the creature, which strikes Ruth as very foolhardy.
‘Hi there, fella.’
It’s a large animal, jet black except for brown bits around its muzzle. A Doberman? A Rottweiler? Ruth is vague about dog breeds. It turns towards them – she’s relieved to see that its eyes are brown not red – in a way that suggests puzzlement rather than aggression.
‘Good boy,’ says Nelson encouragingly.
The dog is clearly torn between wanting its food and suspicion of the strangers. Nelson is trying to skirt past the animal to get to the door. Ruth sticks close to him. Nelson reaches for the door handle. The dog growls.
‘It’s OK, boy.’
The dog watches as Nelson tries the door but, when he aims a kick at the wood, the animal bares its teeth.
‘OK, OK.’ Nelson backs away. He turns to Ruth. ‘It’s locked. The latch must have come down on the other side. It was held open with a bucket. Did I push it out of the way, do you remember?’
‘I think so.’
‘The wind must have swung the door shut. I could probably charge it but I don’t want to upset our friend here.’ He gestures towards the dog whose hackles are still up.
‘Please don’t,’ says Ruth.
The dog is now edging towards its food. Nelson gestures at Ruth to stand still. She is only too happy to do so. She watches as the dog sniffs at the bowl, gives one last superstitious look towards the humans and then starts gobbling the food. There’s a flash of light when Nelson takes a photo, but the animal doesn’t seem to notice. Nelson reaches out a hand to Ruth, she takes it and they move slowly towards the door. Nelson rattles the handle again and squats down to try to see through the slats. Ruth keeps an eye on the dog who is still scoffing away noisily. Funny how it’s endearing to hear animals eating loudly but horrific when it’s humans.
Nelson looks round at her.
‘The wood looks fairly rotten. I’m going to try and kick it down.’
‘What about the dog?’ Ruth hopes she doesn’t sound as scared as she feels.
‘He’s busy eating at the moment.’
Nelson aims a kick at the door. The dog looks up, ears pricked. Nelson kicks again and the wood starts to give way. But the dog is growling. Nelson shoulder barges the door and the dog jumps forward. Moving incredibly quickly, Nelson shields Ruth with his body.
The dog is now facing them, crouched, ready to spring.
‘Steady on, lad,’ says Nelson.
The dog lies down, still watchful but, it seems to Ruth, less angry. Nelson and the dog stare at each other for a long moment.
Ruth hasn’t been this close to Nelson in ages and, even at this moment, she notices. She can smell his aftershave and the fabric conditioner that someone – probably Michelle – puts on his shirts. She can feel him breathing, remarkably calmly. Her arms slide round his waist. She feels him catch his breath. Then, suddenly, they are framed in light as the door behind them opens.
‘Who’s there?’ says a woman’s voice.
The dog sees its chance and darts for freedom. Ruth lets go of Nelson and turns to see a small shape silhouetted in the doorway. Nelson seems to recognise it.
‘Chloe,’ he says.
‘DCI Nelson,’ say
s the woman. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Checking out your devil dog,’ says Nelson.
He moves towards the door and Ruth follows, embarrassed though she couldn’t say why. In the open air, she looks around for the dog but he’s nowhere to be seen. The wind is still whipping the trees into a frenzy and the weathervane continues to spin.
‘I just came to look at the house,’ says the woman. Chloe. ‘To see what needs to be done before selling it.’
So this must be Chloe Noakes, one of the dead couple’s children. Ruth thinks it’s interesting that she feels she needs to explain herself to Nelson.
‘This is Dr Ruth Galloway,’ Nelson is saying.
‘Hallo.’ Chloe holds out her hand, unsmiling. ‘You’re the forensic archaeologist, aren’t you? The one that excavated the garden.’
‘That’s right,’ says Ruth. Chloe has a very direct manner. Not unfriendly, exactly, but rather challenging. She’s small, a good few inches shorter than Ruth and much slighter, but she’s still rather intimidating.
‘Talking of dogs,’ says Nelson, who does not seem intimidated, ‘we’ve met the dog your parents kept in the barn. Seems that someone’s still feeding him.’
‘My parents didn’t have any pets,’ says Chloe. ‘I told that to DS Fuller.’
‘Come and see,’ says Nelson. He leads the way back into the barn and shines his torch on the feeding bowl, now licked clean again, and the basket.
‘You saw the dog just now. It ran straight past you. A Doberman cross, I would say. Nice animal.’
How Nelson can say this is beyond Ruth. It’s as if he and the dog have been out for a male-bonding session at the pub.
‘I’ve never seen that dog before,’ says Chloe, sounding exasperated now.
‘Not when you visited your parents?’
‘I’ve told you. I visited them as little as possible.’
Nelson directs the torch towards the opposite end of the barn.
‘Have you seen that boat before?’
‘We went out in it sometimes when we were children,’ says Chloe. ‘Paul was keener on it than I was.’
The Night Hawks Page 17