There must be something there. Something that links March to Nicola and Jenny. Why can’t he see it? Nelson should be attending a meeting about cuts to police funding but he keeps looking at the files, scrolling through witness statements and forensic reports. What is he missing?
When the phone rings he assumes it’s Jo, asking why he isn’t in some meeting or other, but it’s a more welcome, and unexpected, voice.
‘Nelson, it’s Ruth.’
‘Ruth! What’s up? Is it Katie?’
A familiar sigh.
‘Kate’s fine. I was ringing because . . . well, Phil came to see me today.’
‘Phil Trent? The dickhead you left in charge of forensic archaeology when you buggered off to Cambridge?’
Another, longer, sigh. ‘I didn’t “bugger off”, Nelson. I left for a better job. Just like you did when you moved to Norfolk.’
‘I’ve regretted it ever since.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’
She’s probably right but Nelson is not in the mood to admit that there’s anything good about any county south of Lancashire. He counters with, ‘It was Katie I was worried about.’
‘She’s fine,’ says Ruth. ‘Doing really well at school. You came to her last parents’ evening.’
‘She’s a little star.’
‘She is. Anyway, about Phil . . .’
‘What about him?’
‘He was sent a postcard, one of Ivor March’s paintings. On the back it said, “Call yourself an archaeologist. Ruth Galloway is worth ten of you. She will find Nicola and Jenny.”’
‘Jesus,’ says Nelson. ‘Postmark?’
‘Ely.’
‘Put it in a plastic bag. I’ll be over in an hour.’
‘I’m working.’
‘Isn’t term over? I thought the rule was: the posher the university the shorter the terms.’
‘Teaching’s over,’ says Ruth patiently, ‘but exams are still going on and students are handing in their dissertations. This afternoon I’m seeing two of my PhD students and then I’ve got an academic board.’ She realises that this is a foreign language to Nelson.
‘When are you free?’
‘Not until five.’
‘Who’s collecting Katie from school?’
‘Frank.’
Nelson grinds his teeth. A habit his dentist tells him he must try to break. ‘I’ll be there at five,’ he says.
*
Ruth knows she shouldn’t look forward to Nelson’s visit but she does. She thinks about it all through the meeting, which is a dull affair about grade boundaries. Because of Kate, she still sees Nelson fairly regularly but something fundamental in their relationship changed when she moved to Cambridge. It wasn’t the place – although Nelson claims to loathe the university town – it was the fact that she moved in with Frank. She surprised everyone with the decision, not least herself, but she knows, deep down, that it wasn’t born out of passion but from a desire for something to change in her life. If she’d stayed in Norfolk, she would have carried on working at UNN, driving Kate to the childminder every morning, running digs in the summer and getting irritated with Phil. She would also have carried on seeing Nelson and occasionally, when they were a bit drunk or a bit emotional, they would have ended up in bed together. And there was a danger that she would have stayed just for this because sex with Nelson is so good that it effectively ruins sex with anyone else. Well, now she is living with Frank and they have sex and it’s very nice, thank you very much. But she has only rented out her cottage on the north Norfolk coast. She’s not quite ready to burn her boats yet.
At five precisely she gets a message from Larry in the porter’s lodge to say that she has a visitor. She walks to meet him, thinking again of their first meeting at UNN. These surroundings – the court, the ancient buildings, the sound of the organ playing in the chapel – couldn’t be more different but there is still the sense that Nelson brings with him the excitement of being an outsider, a dangerous glimpse of the real world.
‘What a place,’ says Nelson, as they walk to Ruth’s office. ‘How much does all this cost the tax payer?’
‘The college is independently wealthy,’ says Ruth.
‘Of course it is. As are most of your students, I bet.’
‘Sixty per cent of our students are from state schools.’
‘How many children go to state schools? Ninety per cent or more.’
‘Your children didn’t,’ says Ruth. ‘Your older children, that is. But you’re right. Oxbridge should take more state school pupils. This place is elitist. I can’t defend it.’
‘But you still work here.’
‘Let’s not go through this again, Nelson,’ says Ruth, opening the door that leads to her staircase.
Nelson subsides though he mutters something else about the taxpayer when he sees Ruth’s office. She offers coffee, which Nelson refuses. Then she gets out the postcard, still in its plastic wrapping, and puts it in front of him.
Nelson puts on reading glasses to look at it, which gives Ruth a slight shock. Then he says, ‘I’ll take it to be analysed but I don’t think it’s March’s writing. He’s written to me a few times. Long letters about what a genius he is.’
‘Who else could have written it?’
‘Maybe the girlfriend, Chantal Simmonds. She’s still obsessed with the case. Keeps writing letters to the local papers saying he’s innocent. They don’t print them but they do let us know.’
‘But how could she have heard of me?’
‘You’re famous,’ says Nelson. ‘You’ve written books. You’ve appeared on TV.’
Ruth doesn’t know whether he’s joking or not. She says, ‘You said in the news conference that you think March killed these other women, Nicola Ferris and Jenny McGuire.’
‘Did you see it?’ says Nelson. ‘I hate that sort of thing. Jo says I’m too intimidating.’ But Ruth thinks he looks rather pleased all the same.
‘This letter says “She will find Nicola and Jenny”. That assumes they’re buried somewhere.’
‘I think they are,’ says Nelson. ‘They both disappeared near the Cley marshes. I think they’re buried in the area. They’re not in Chantal’s garden, that’s for sure. We turned the place over.’
‘If they’re buried on the marshes, then their bodies will be well preserved,’ said Ruth. ‘Remember that first body we found? The Iron Age girl?’
‘I remember,’ says Nelson, and Ruth knows that he’s thinking about the Saltmarsh and the hand emerging from the earth, still with honeysuckle rope twined about the wrist.
Nelson looks at the postcard again. His glasses are black and heavy-rimmed. They make him look older but they’re also rather flattering. Ruth wonders whether Michelle chose them for him.
‘How was your writing retreat?’ he says.
Ruth is taken aback. ‘What?’
‘Your writing retreat at Grey Walls. Did you get your book finished?’
‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘I did. Why are you interested in my writing, all of a sudden?’
‘I’m interested in Grey Walls,’ says Nelson. ‘Because Ivor March used to work there.’
Now Ruth just stares at him. The light outside is bright but it seems as if the room has suddenly got darker.
‘Did you meet a woman called Christina Martin?’
‘Crissy Martin. Yes.’
‘Like her?’
‘Very much.’
‘So did March. He used to be married to her.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘I never joke about murder. March and Christina Martin were married for almost ten years. They ran this Grey Walls place together. I don’t suppose that came up in conversation, even though March was on trial last week?’
‘No, it didn’t.’ There were no televisions at Grey Wa
lls and Ruth had deliberately avoided looking at the news on her phone. There had been three other guests but conversation in the evenings had tended towards art and poetry and the existence of God. They had not discussed the fact that Crissy’s ex-husband was on trial for murder.
‘Have you got any examples of Christina’s handwriting?’
It so happens that Ruth has this very thing. When she left Grey Walls, Crissy gave her a box of home-made fudge, beautifully wrapped in green ribbon. With the present came a card, a woodcut of trees in winter. There’s a note inside: Dearest Ruth. It’s been a joy to get to know you. Stay strong, stay angry, stay beautiful. Cxx. Everything that is in Ruth shrinks from showing this message to Nelson. But she knows that it has to be done.
She has the card pinned to her noticeboard. Now she presents it to Nelson. His mouth twitches as he reads but he says nothing. Then he puts the card next to the postcard of the Cley marshes.
The writing is the same.
Chapter 6
It’s still light when Nelson drives home along the Fen Causeway. In fact, it’s a beautiful evening but, once again, the scenery gives Nelson no pleasure at all. He hates the way that the land drops away on either side of the road, the highest point in the landscape, and the way that the flat fields seem to wave and shimmer as they reach the horizon, giving the illusion of water and movement. It’s an accident black spot, that’s what it is. One wrong turn of the wheel and he would be in the ditch and, in this godforsaken part of the world, he’d probably lie for days before anyone found him. He thinks of Nicola Ferris and her abandoned bicycle. It was found the morning after her disappearance, lying by a gravel path that led across the marshes. Passers-by said that the wind was making the wheels spin as if the rider had only just dismounted. Jenny McGuire had been on a bike too. Hers was thrown into a hedgerow, about a mile from her home.
Nelson presses the hands-free option on his phone.
‘Call Cloughie,’ he growls.
Seconds later a voice says, ‘Hi, boss.’ Then it shifts into a different gear. ‘Hi, Nelson.’ Clough might be a DI now, in charge of his own patch in Cambridgeshire, but to him Nelson will always be the boss.
‘Hi, Cloughie. How’s the life of a DI?’
‘Full of bloody meetings. I don’t know how you’ve stood it all these years.’
‘I never go to them if I can help it. I should be in one now but instead I’m driving home from bloody Cambridge.’
‘Cambridge? Have you been to see Ruth?’
‘Yes,’ says Nelson. ‘On business.’ Clough knows about Nelson and Ruth, of course. The whole team knows but, by mutual consent, maintain the pretence that Ruth is simply a valuable expert witness. Now Nelson tells Clough about the postcard and the handwriting match. Clough had left King’s Lynn by the time of the March case and often complains about missing out on the fun. But Christina Martin is on his territory. Nelson can’t go charging in to interview her without checking with Clough first. It’s come to this, he thinks, asking for Cloughie’s permission before he acts. But, by and large, he’s proud of his two protégés. Judy scored very highly in her inspector’s exam and Clough is already heading up his own team. He has trained them well.
‘So the ex-wife sent Phil a postcard,’ says Clough. ‘Why not just send it to Ruth?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Nelson. ‘But someone’s playing games. I don’t like it.’
‘We’d better see this Christina Martin,’ says Clough. ‘Hadn’t we?’
Nelson likes the ‘we’. ‘Tomorrow?’ he says. He doesn’t believe in wasting time.
‘Yes, tomorrow,’ says Clough. ‘Meet you there at nine.’
It’s true; Nelson has brought him up him well.
*
Ruth smells cooking as soon as she opens the door. She and Frank take it in turns to make supper. Neither of them is a particularly good cook but, over the two years they’ve been together, they have managed to amass a repertoire of edible meals. Frank brought up his three children alone after his wife died and he brings the same breezy competence to cooking that he does to everything else. It can’t have been easy at the time, Ruth knows, but Fred, Jane and Sean seem to have grown up into admirably well-balanced adults. They all still live in America. Fred is married with a child (Frank is a grandfather! Ruth is sleeping with a grandfather!), Jane is a realtor, which apparently means an estate agent, and Sean seems to be a perpetual student. Frank’s children have all visited them in England. They are all tall and athletic, with Frank’s blue eyes and presumably their dead mother’s fair hair. Fred and Sean were charming, expressing polite interest in archaeology and in Ruth, but Ruth liked Jane best because she took Kate rock climbing and taught her a number of Camp America songs, complete with gestures.
Today Frank is making chilli con carne. Ruth hopes that he hasn’t put chocolate in it. He did this once because it was recommended in a magazine. For a historian, used to assessing primary and secondary sources, Frank has a touching faith in anything he reads in the cookery pages. He overdid the chocolate, resulting in a claggy texture that had Kate racing from the room with her hands over her mouth. Ruth glances around the kitchen looking for an incriminating Green and Black’s wrapper but there are only the usual ingredients, plus a stack of used utensils.
Kate is at the kitchen table, writing carefully in a lined notebook.
‘Is that homework?’ says Ruth, kissing her. She thinks that Kate’s school sets too much homework. Several times she has been tempted to write to them citing evidence that homework set in the primary years has almost no effect on later attainment. Frank has always dissuaded her from sending the letter. He seems to enjoy helping Kate with her assignments, especially the history ones. Last year they made a model of a castle that was almost embarrassing in its historical accuracy.
‘It’s my reading journal,’ says Kate. ‘We don’t have to do it but I want to keep up to date.’ Ruth supposes that she can’t really complain about self-imposed homework.
The chilli is successful and not in the least chocolatey. Afterwards, Kate disappears to watch television while Ruth and Frank load the dishwasher with what looks like every utensil in the house. Then Ruth makes tea. They are trying not to drink wine during the week.
‘I saw Nelson today,’ she says, putting mugs on the table.
She watches Frank hesitate before saying, ‘Oh? Did he come to Cambridge?’
‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘On sufferance. Complaining about elitism, snobbishness and too many bicycles.’ She wants to make Frank smile, and succeeds, but in doing so feels oddly disloyal to Nelson.
‘He didn’t come here just to complain about the bicycles?’
‘No,’ says Ruth. She sits down, wondering where to start. Eventually, she says, ‘You know the retreat I was on last week?’
‘I sure do.’
‘You met Crissy, the woman who runs it. I introduced you when you came to pick me up. She was really nice. I liked her a lot. Well, it turns out that she was married to Ivor March.’
‘Ivor March? The man who killed those women in Norfolk?’
‘Yes. He was on trial that very week and Crissy never mentioned it once. It was Nelson’s case and Phil was the forensic archaeologist involved.’ She tries not to let any residual resentment creep into her tone.
‘Phil got a postcard last week,’ she continues. ‘It said that I should have done the excavation and that I was worth ten of him. It said that I would have found the other two women, the ones who are still missing. Well, it turns out that Crissy wrote the postcard. That’s why Nelson came to see me.’
‘Crissy wrote to Phil? She sounds as mad as her husband.’
‘The thing is,’ says Ruth, ‘she seemed the opposite of mad. She’s got this calm manner and this way of listening to you, really listening, that makes you tell her exactly what you’re thinking. I thought she was amazing. I really did. An
d that’s not like me.’
‘It’s not,’ says Frank, smiling.
‘And now I keep thinking – all that week, was she thinking about how her husband killed those women? And was she thinking about me? That I should be involved with the case.’
‘It sounds as if you want to be involved with the case,’ says Frank. His voice is casual but Ruth isn’t fooled. She tries to examine her feelings honestly.
‘I don’t want to be involved with the case,’ she says. ‘It sounds horrible. Those poor women being killed like that. But I do miss being part of the team.’
‘You have a new team now.’ Frank looks her. It’s the blue-eyed stare that makes women still write to him, care of the television company, offering to be the second Mrs Frank Barker.
‘Team Rank,’ says Ruth. It’s an old joke, based on the time when Kate tried to put their names together in a Brangelina-ish way.
‘Team Rank,’ says Frank. ‘With any luck you won’t hear from this woman again.’
*
When Nelson gets home, he’s pleased to see his daughter Laura’s car in the drive. Quite apart from the pleasure of seeing Laura, her visit will distract Michelle from his late return. Michelle knows that he sees Ruth, of course. They often take Kate out together – George adores her – and, over the years, Michelle and Ruth have developed a cordial and respectful relationship. All the same, there’s no sense in mentioning Ruth if he doesn’t have to.
Laura is now a primary school teacher. She has a flat in Lynn which she shares with two other teachers. There’s no boyfriend at present or, at least, not one that she has introduced to her parents. When Nelson enters the sitting room, he feels his usual jolt of love at the sight of his first-born child now playing with his (surely!) last-born on the carpet.
‘Hi, Dad.’ Laura gets up and gives him a kiss. She’d been furious when she found out about Ruth and Kate two years ago but she has now forgiven him and, if she is sometimes slightly constrained in her manner, he manages to ignore this. He’s lucky that Laura speaks to him at all.
‘Hi, love. How’s school?’
The Lantern Men Page 4