Ruth is shaken. The circumstances of her discovery are fairly well documented but there’s something in March’s voice that makes her blood run cold. Maybe it’s the female pronoun and the detail about the rope.
March watches her to see if there’s a reaction but Ruth keeps her face still. He goes on, ‘You wrote a book about the Raven King in Lancashire. You were instrumental in clearing the name of an innocent woman accused of murder.’
Was I? thinks Ruth. Then she remembers: Mother Hook, the Victorian childminder, or ‘baby-farmer’, accused of murdering her charges. Ruth had excavated her remains and been involved in a TV programme that concluded that the children had died of natural causes. She prays that March hasn’t seen it.
‘I watched you on television,’ says March. ‘You have an excellent screen presence. I understand that you’re now living with the presenter, Frank Barker.’
‘Dr Galloway’s private life is none of your business,’ says Nelson.
‘No,’ says March. ‘I can understand that this is painful for you, DCI Nelson. Can I ask you a question, Dr Galloway?’
‘You can ask,’ says Ruth. She notes that March calls her ‘Dr Galloway’. This is her preferred form of address, she’s proud of her doctorate and she doesn’t see why near-strangers should call her Ruth, but is there something sinister in the way March keeps on using it? Has he heard that this is the way into her good favour?
March leans back in his plastic chair, cuffed hands around his knee. ‘What do you think of Phil Trent?’
Careful, Ruth tells herself. ‘He’s a respected archaeologist,’ she says.
‘And your ex-boss?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought he was an idiot,’ says March. ‘He was far too pleased with himself and he missed some vital clues. I want you to promise to do the excavation this time. Do I have your word, Dr Galloway?’
‘I’ll do the excavation,’ she says, ‘but I’ll need some help from the field archaeology team.’
‘But you’ll oversee it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you,’ says March, leaning forward, ‘thank you from the bottom of my heart.’
‘Cut the crap,’ says Nelson, ‘and tell us where the bodies are buried.’
And, smiling, March does so.
*
Driving back along the A11, Nelson puts the windows down, as if to expel the stench of prison, and of Ivor March. The day had grown hotter. Ruth takes off her black jacket and rolls her sleeves up. There’s a sense of escape, as if they’ve played their Get Out of Jail Free card.
‘The Jolly Boatman,’ says Nelson. ‘That’s been derelict for years.’
March told them that the bodies were buried in the garden of a pub on the Cley marshes that had once been owned by a friend of his. ‘I used to drink there years ago,’ he says, smiling as if at a pleasant memory. Nelson has already checked with the land registry and got permission to dig. Ruth has spoken to Ted from UNN’s field archaeology team. They will start work tomorrow.
‘He said it was near the church,’ says Ruth. ‘That’s not far from where Nicola’s bicycle was found.’
‘I thought that immediately. It’s near the community centre too, and the Dragon, which is where the art class went for end-of-term drinks.’
‘Well, that all points to March,’ says Ruth.
‘It does,’ says Nelson. ‘I wonder why he’s so keen to help, all of a sudden. There’ll be a reason, if I know him.’
‘He was horrible,’ says Ruth, remembering.
‘You weren’t affected by the famous charisma then?’ Nelson shoots a sidelong glance at her.
‘No,’ says Ruth. ‘I can’t see why anyone would be.’ She thinks of Crissy, whom she had liked and rather admired. Crissy had liked Ivor March enough to marry him and, according to Nelson, she wants to get him released from prison. It makes Ruth doubt her own judgement. She, who doesn’t make new friends easily, had confided in Crissy, trusted her. Had Crissy been talking to March about her all along, telling him about Ruth’s relationship with Nelson? She remembers him saying, ‘I can understand that this is painful for you, DCI Nelson.’ Does March know all about Ruth and Nelson, and about Ruth and Frank too? Does he – God forbid – also know about Kate?
‘Do prisoners get access to the internet?’ she asks.
‘No,’ says Nelson, ‘except under close supervision. Why?’
‘I was just wondering how March knew all that stuff about me.’
‘My guess is he got Chantal Simmonds, his girlfriend, to research you,’ says Nelson. ‘She seems to do everything for him. And she knows about you. About us. She said as much to my face.’
‘About us’ seems to reverberate around the car. Nelson has never used that phrase before. Ridiculously, Ruth feels herself colouring.
‘I was thinking more about the archaeology,’ she says, turning away until her face cools down. ‘He seemed to know a lot about my previous digs. And he’d seen me on TV.’
‘You’re famous now, Ruth,’ says Nelson. ‘I expect you get stopped in the street and asked for autographs.’
Ruth ignores this. ‘But he can’t have watched Women Who Kill in prison. It was a few years ago now, must have been before he was arrested.’
Nelson is silent for a few minutes and Ruth thinks that he is considering this point. Then he says, ‘Ruth?’ in a completely new tone.
‘Yes?’ says Ruth, wondering what’s coming next.
‘There’s a good pub near here. Want to stop for lunch?’
‘Yes, please,’ says Ruth, all thoughts of crime and punishment forgotten.
*
The pub is just off the main road but it looks as if it could be in a different world. It’s in the middle of the Thetford forest, with trees all around, like a witch’s house in a fairy tale. Inside it’s almost empty. Ruth supposes this is normal for midday on a Wednesday. The only customers are a man at the bar who looks as if he’s been there for many years and a Dutch couple in hiking clothes who appear to be lost, studying an ordnance survey map with worried faces. Ruth wonders how Nelson knows the place. Is it somewhere he comes with Michelle for pub lunches or for a cold beer on a summer evening? Don’t think about that, she tells herself. She goes to the loo and is surprised to see that her reflection looks rather perky. She isn’t wearing any make-up, in deference to ‘Guidelines for Visiting Prisons’, but her eyes look very bright and her hair is behaving itself for a change, waving slightly rather than falling limply to her shoulders. She rubs her cheeks to give them some colour and smiles at herself in the mirror. Be careful, Ruth, says her reflection.
They sit in the garden, a square of green overlooked by the forest. Ruth has a glass of wine but Nelson drinks Coke. How many times have they done this? wonders Ruth. Not many. The first time was in a quayside pub in King’s Lynn, in the middle of the Scarlet Henderson investigation. Ruth remembers Nelson eating sausages and mash like someone refuelling, and talking about his daughters, who were then only names to her. Other than that, and apart from the dreamlike interlude in Italy, they haven’t had many meals together. She can’t imagine eating with Nelson every night, sharing the cooking like she does with Frank, discussing the day’s events. She is sure that Michelle does all the cooking in the Nelson household. She remembers someone – probably Clough – praising Michelle’s Yorkshire puddings. Of course, she would be a roast-meal-on-Sundays sort of person.
Sure enough, Nelson orders beef with all the trimmings. Ruth has fish pie, something that is beyond her culinary expertise.
‘The prison seems miles away,’ says Ruth, watching a black and white cat walk along the fence. It reminds her of her own much-loved Sparky, dead now for ten years.
‘Prisons are grim places,’ says Nelson, unconsciously echoing Cathbad. ‘The idea of so many people locked up together, the claustrophobia, the unhappiness.
A prison warder once told me that, at midnight on New Year’s Eve, the inmates all shout and bang stuff against the walls. It’s because another year has gone by. They’re all just wishing the time away.’
‘Will March get a life sentence, do you think?’
‘There’s no such thing as a life sentence any more,’ says Nelson. ‘In really serious cases the judge can make a whole life order which, in effect, means life. But, whatever happens, March should get at least fifteen years for each of the murders. He’s fifty-one now. He won’t be eligible for parole until he’s in his eighties. If ever.’
‘And if we find the other bodies that could mean thirty more years.’
‘I hope so,’ says Nelson.
Did March know this, wonders Ruth, when he smiled and told them where his other victims were buried? She assumes that he did. He’s an intelligent man, after all, and one who has already been on trial for two murders. The thought which has been in her head all day finally comes to the surface.
‘Then why did he tell us? If I find the bodies, if we find them, then he’s never going to get out of prison.’
‘He’s a narcissist,’ says Nelson. ‘He loves to be the centre of attention. This way we all concentrate on him for a bit longer.’
‘It’s a high price to pay,’ says Ruth. ‘Is it possible that he actually feels some contrition?’
‘No,’ says Nelson shortly. Their food arrives and the landlady asks whether they’d like more drinks. Ruth recklessly accepts a second glass of wine. She wants to forget Ivor March now but Nelson says, putting salt on his food in a way that Ruth suspects Michelle would not allow, ‘Crissy wanted you to excavate because she actually thinks that March is innocent and that you’ll find a way to prove it. I still can’t get over the way these women all stand by him. Crissy, Chantal Simmonds. There’s another woman too, Ailsa Britain, who’s apparently campaigning for his release.’
What if he is innocent? thinks Ruth suddenly. But then she thinks of Ivor March saying, ‘I’ve been following your career,’ with that sinister stare, almost a leer. He is evil, she is sure of it.
They don’t talk about March again. They finish their meal and the landlady brings coffee and those gold-wrapped chocolates that you only see on saucers in restaurants. They talk about Kate and the summer. Ruth mentions swimming with Cathbad but doesn’t tell Nelson about the panic attack. Nelson says how good it was to see Clough again. Ruth says that she visited Cassandra and the new baby. ‘They seem very happy, very settled. Amélie looks exactly like Clough.’ Nelson updates Ruth on Laura and Rebecca. ‘I still can’t believe that my daughter’s a teacher. I’ve never known a teacher, not in real life anyway.’ ‘I’m a teacher,’ says Ruth. ‘You’re different,’ says Nelson.
It’s nearly three o’clock when the landlady – Sue – brings their bill. Ruth wants to split it but Nelson insists on paying.
‘You must come again,’ says Sue, pocketing her tip. ‘You and your wife.’
It’s a few moments before Ruth realises that the landlady is referring to her.
Chapter 10
Phil has had a trying day. Teaching is over for the term but he’s had to take two revision groups and see half a dozen students. Undergraduates have got more challenging in recent years, he thinks, ever since they’ve started calling them ‘clients’ and charging them exorbitant fees. When Phil was an undergraduate at Sheffield in the eighties, you didn’t expect to see your tutor unless you were ill or in danger of being kicked out. Now they seem to want his attention all the time. ‘Can I have an extension on this essay?’ ‘I’m dyslexic, can I have more time on the exam?’ ‘My girlfriend/boyfriend/mother/dog doesn’t understand me. Can I talk to you about it?’ No, Phil wants to say, you can only talk to me about archaeology and then only if you really can’t say it in an email. Better still, don’t say it at all. A little repression never hurt anyone.
Phil is always busy these days. He can’t afford to replace Ruth so has had to split her considerable teaching load between other members of staff. But the worst thing is, without Ruth, they can’t run the MA in forensic archaeology. Phil likes postgraduate students, especially when they come from overseas; they pay hefty fees and seem to have fewer essay/dyslexia/parent/dog crises. But now they’ve had to cancel their most lucrative course. What possessed Ruth to go off to Cambridge? OK, Oxbridge is prestigious but Ruth always claimed not to care about things like that. Shona says that it’s all to do with Ruth’s private life – something to do with getting away from Nelson – but Shona always thinks that everything’s related to sex. It comes of teaching English Literature.
Today, Phil had to run a session on Human Evolution and was asked difficult questions about homo floresiensis. How can he be expected to keep up to date with every new development in anthropology, including hobbit-people in Indonesia? He’d told the student to google it but could tell by her face that she didn’t think this represented good value for her tuition fees. Then he had a boring meeting about finance and now he has to go home and endure a dinner party, of all things. ‘No one has dinner parties any more,’ he’d protested to Shona but she’d been adamant. There is a new poetry lecturer that he simply has to meet and he’s married to a really interesting woman who makes jewellery out of plastic found on the beach. It would do them good to have some intelligent conversation, Shona had said. She’ll put Louis to bed early and Phil can make his special hummus. Damn, thinks Phil, he’s forgotten to buy chickpeas. He’ll have to stop at a shop on the way home. Wearily, he puts on his bicycle clips and hoists his backpack onto his shoulders.
In an effort to stay fit, Phil has recently started cycling into work. He enjoys it in the morning, freewheeling past all the traffic, the wind in his face. It’s better than a double espresso for waking you up. But now he wishes that he was getting into a gas-guzzling car with air-conditioning and cruise control. He’d be home in a few minutes, there would be time to have a shower and a glass of wine before Mr Poetry and Ms Plastic turned up. Oh well, this way he’s helping to save the world. He undoes the padlock, puts on his headphones – he’s listening to a true crime podcast – and cycles through the campus. It’s very quiet, the students are either revising or off-site. A light wind ripples over the ornamental lake and he can smell may flowers mingled with a pungent scent of weed. That must mean that there are students about somewhere.
The podcast keeps him entertained for the slog along the main round and the dance-of-death through the roundabouts. He passes the golf course and the industrial estate, immersed in the story of a serial killer who murders women and weaves clothes out of their hair. It makes him think of the poet’s wife and her plastic earrings. When he reaches the outskirts of Lynn he takes a detour to pass a convenience store. He buys two cans of chickpeas, a lemon and a bottle of red, because you can never have too much booze at a dinner party. He adds a packet of After Eight mints because that’s what his mother always offered guests with their coffee. He pays for his purchases and packs them all in his now-bulging backpack. Then he gets back on his bike, plugs in the Rapunzel Killer, and heads for home.
Phil and Shona have a Georgian town house off a square called Tuesday Market Place. Today Phil approaches via a backroad, a narrow alleyway where the houses lean in towards each other as if they are gossiping. But Phil is hardly concentrating on his surroundings now. He’s nearly home. He can taste that first glass of wine as if it’s already making its way down his throat.
That’s why the attack comes as a complete surprise.
Something slams into him, knocking him off his bike. Phil hits the ground hard. He’s wearing a helmet but the shock winds him for a moment. Then someone grabs him and seems to be pulling at his clothes. ‘Get off,’ says Phil, knowing that his voice sounds shaky and feeble. The figure leans over him and he thinks he sees the glint of a knife.
‘Hey!’ Another voice, loud, resonant and somehow familiar. The knifeman stops and look
s round, then he takes to his heels. A new shape appears, clad in jeans, T-shirt and a billowing purple cloak.
‘Cathbad,’ says Phil.
Then his chest explodes.
*
Ruth is cooking. She’s not really hungry after her pub lunch but she feels, in a vague sort of way, that she ought to make supper tonight. Frank hadn’t wanted her to go to the prison but she had gone anyway. Not that Frank has any right to tell her what to do, thinks Ruth, chopping onions viciously, but, for the sake of a pleasant life, it’s better if they aren’t angry with each other. She knows, of course, why Frank hadn’t wanted her to go. It was about Nelson. It’s always about Nelson.
Frank knows that Nelson will always be part of her life, because of Kate. He’s generous about this, he always talks nicely to Kate about her dad and is polite to Nelson when they meet. But he doesn’t like it when Ruth works with Nelson. He’d never say so but it’s evident in the way he talks about ‘helping the police with their enquiries’, in the slight roll of his eyes when Ruth shows what he considers to be an unnatural interest in serious crime. She had followed the Ivor March case from the start, for example, while Frank took refuge on the moral high ground. ‘I’m afraid I don’t like hearing about women being murdered.’
What will Frank say when Ruth tells him that tomorrow she’ll be digging up the gardens of a pub, in the company of Nelson and most of the Serious Crimes Team? She’s guiltily aware that this will also entail asking Frank to collect Kate from school. She remembers the delight on Kate’s face today when she’d seen both her mother and her father waiting for her at the school gate. She’d flung herself into Nelson’s arms jabbering about gold stars and netball matches and what Rosie said to Mrs Loomis in the lunch queue. Ruth had been forgotten but she didn’t mind. She’d had to pretend that she had a cold to excuse her streaming eyes. It wasn’t fair that Kate hardly ever saw her father in the week. Ruth didn’t stop to think that Nelson was unlikely to have collected Laura and Rebecca from school very often. Just at that moment, she had felt that her situation was almost tragic. Kate should see Nelson every day. Ruth should see Nelson every day.
The Lantern Men Page 8