The Lantern Men

by Elly Griffiths

  ‘No.’

  Heidi was still alive at eight thirty so this, theoretically, puts Leonard in the clear. Judy gets out her phone and finds the picture of the pumpkin badge.

  ‘Have you see this before?’

  ‘What is it?’ Leonard peers closer. ‘It’s a child’s badge, isn’t it?’

  Judy repeats, ‘Have you seen a badge like this before?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe at Hallowe’en. The students here wear all sorts of stuff on their blazers. It’s a kind of fashion. Why are you asking me?’

  Judy doesn’t answer. Leonard didn’t seem to react to the Jack O’Lantern with anything other than bemusement but he could be a good actor. The best teachers usually are.

  ‘Tell us about the barbecue,’ she says.

  ‘Ivor spent a lot of time with Jenny,’ says Leonard. His voice is different now, dreamy and reflective. ‘They were sitting on the beach a little way from the rest of us. I don’t think Chantal was too happy about it. I saw Chantal talking to Bob and then Bob went over to try to break them up but Ivor and Jenny stayed there chatting until it was almost dark. As we walked back I could hear Ivor and Chantal arguing.’

  Having been on the receiving end of Chantal’s anger a few times, Judy is sure that she wouldn’t have held back. But, a few months later, Chantal Simmonds was passionately defending her partner against the charge of murdering two women. Women who were later found buried in her garden.

  ‘What about Heidi?’ says Judy. ‘Who was she talking to?’

  ‘Ailsa, I think. I remember that they went down to the sea shore to paddle. It was a warm evening.’

  ‘What were you doing when all this was going on?’ she asks.

  ‘What do men always do at barbecues? I was cooking the meat.’

  Judy has a sudden craving for barbecued ribs. She wonders how many of the Grey Walls set were vegetarians like Cathbad. Maybe cooking the meat wasn’t such a time-­consuming job after all.

  ‘Did you see Heidi again after the barbecue?’ she says.

  ‘Just at the cycle club. Oh, I think I had a drink with her and her boyfriend once.’

  ‘Why wasn’t Josh, the boyfriend, invited to the barbecue?’ asks Judy. ‘Wasn’t he “interesting and intelligent” too?’

  ‘No he wasn’t,’ says Leonard coolly. ‘I found him rather dull, since you ask.’

  Is it really that simple, thinks Judy. The boss always thinks the worst of everyone but could he be right and was Leonard somehow offering Heidi to Ivor March? But March had spent the whole evening talking to Jenny McGuire.

  ‘One last question,’ she says. ‘Who took the photo?’

  ‘The photo? Oh . . . that was Miles. My husband.’

  Judy wonders if he’s lying.

  As they descend the stairs, the students start swarming upwards. They seem impossibly loud, their feet thundering on the stone steps. Judy could never be a teacher.

  In the playground Judy gets a message from the forensic dentist.

  The third body is definitely that of Sofia Novak.

  *

  Ruth doesn’t like hospitals. Still, she tells herself, as she negotiates the labyrinthine parking system at the Queen Elizabeth, she doesn’t suppose anyone really loves them. But the last few years have had their share of medical trauma: first Nelson nearly dying in this very hospital, then Ruth’s mother actually dying in London, then Ruth and Cathbad’s near-fatal car crash. Just the smell, a potent mix of antiseptic, instant coffee and hand sanitiser, has the power to make Ruth feel slightly sick. She tries to ignore it and sets off along the endless corridors in search of Phil’s ward.

  Her ex-boss is sitting up in bed doing the Guardian crossword. Just the quick one, Ruth is relieved to notice. She can do the quick crossword in fifteen minutes but the cryptic is still beyond her. Frank often suggests that they do The Times cryptic together on a Saturday but something in Ruth shies away from that kind of intimacy. She’s happy to sleep with Frank but solve two down (Teach about swindler (5))? No, it’s too much. Besides, he’s better at it than her.

  ‘Ruth!’ says Phil sounding genuinely pleased. ‘Shona said that you might come.’

  ‘How are you?’ says Ruth.

  ‘Better,’ says Phil. ‘Feeling pretty bored, to tell you the truth. I’ve got a TV but it only seems to show Antiques Roadshow.’

  Ruth glances along the ward, where every TV seems to show the same cracked Toby jug. ‘I’ve brought you a book,’ she says. She’s brought him an Ian Rankin hardback, one that she wants for herself. She realises that she has no idea what sort of books Phil reads, if any.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘I don’t normally read crime fiction.’ A black mark to him, in Ruth’s opinion.

  ‘Shona says that you might be home at the weekend,’ she says.

  ‘I hope so,’ says Phil. ‘I’m really missing Shona and Louis.’ He looks quite human, sitting there in his striped pyjamas, with his red-rimmed specs on top of his head. Ruth feels quite warmly towards him, even though she notes that he rarely mentions missing his two sons by his first wife.

  ‘At least term is nearly over,’ she says. ‘You can have a proper rest over the summer.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Phil. He picks up the Rebus book and seems absorbed in the cover. Then he says, ‘I’m not sure I’ll be going back.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asks Ruth.

  ‘This was a wake-up call,’ says Phil, putting the book down. ‘I’m fifty-five, Ruth. I don’t want to die in my office looking at paperwork. I’ve got twenty, thirty more years to spend with my nearest and dearest. I want to travel, walk the Inca trail, go to a full moon party in Thailand, see the sun rise over the pyramids. I want to write a book.’

  Several thoughts rush into Ruth’s head. Phil is fifty-five? He must dye his hair. His travel plan sounds a bit like a belated gap year. She imagines that full moon parties are full of drunk eighteen-year-olds marking the transition from public school to Russell Group university. She can’t see Phil scaling Machu Picchu, he often complains about the non-­existent hills in Norfolk. And has Phil forgotten that he has a school-age son? What will Louis be doing while his father is watching the sun rise in Egypt? Plus, Nelson is right. Why is everyone writing a book?

  But, then, crowding out these rather mean-minded reflections, is this thought: there will be a vacancy for Head of Archaeology at UNN. Is this what Cathbad meant about the attack on Phil having repercussions?

  Phil is looking at her shrewdly but not without affection. ‘You should go for it, Ruth,’ he says, as if she has spoken the thought aloud. ‘You’re a really good archaeologist. A good leader too.’

  ‘I only moved to Cambridge a couple of years ago,’ says Ruth.

  ‘But your heart is still here,’ says Phil. ‘Isn’t it?’

  *

  Bob Carr is friendly but slightly on the defensive, Judy thinks. He has two students working in his studio. They are busy dabbing a waxy substance onto sheets of metal and hardly look up when Judy and Tony enter.

  ‘Can we talk in private?’ asks Judy.

  ‘Of course,’ says Bob. ‘Sara and Jo are just applying hard-ground before they draw out their designs prior to exposing the plates to the corroding medium.’ It’s a whole other language.

  They climb the wooden stairs to the psychedelic apartment. Bob makes coffee in the candy-striped cafetière. Judy drinks gratefully. Leonard had hardly been in the mood to offer refreshments.

  ‘Do you remember this?’ Judy shows him the photograph. ‘It was taken in July last year.’

  Bob smooths out the photocopy. His hands are stained with ink so he is careful only to touch the edges.

  ‘It was a lovely evening,’ he says. ‘The tide was out and the sand stretched for miles.’

  ‘Do you recognise these women?’ Judy points. She’s not in the mood for reflecti
ons on the beauties of Norfolk. She gets enough of that at home.

  ‘That’s Jenny,’ says Bob. ‘Oh dear.’ He rubs his eyes with an inky hand.

  ‘And the other woman at the front?’

  ‘I can’t remember her name but she came with Leonard. A sweet girl, as I remember.’

  ‘That’s Heidi Lucas. She was murdered last week.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ says Bob again. His hands are shaking slightly.

  ‘We’re interested in anything that you can remember about the barbecue. Who was Jenny talking to, for example?’

  ‘I think she talked to Ivor for a while. And to Ailsa and Crissy.’

  ‘We’ve heard that she talked to Ivor for a long time and that Chantal Simmonds was angry about it.’

  ‘Chantal’s a lovely woman.’ It’s the first time that Judy has seen Bob look annoyed. ‘She and Ivor had the perfect relationship. She’s above petty jealousy.’

  ‘So you didn’t go over to try to break up Ivor and Jenny?’

  ‘I may have gone over just to chat to them. I certainly wasn’t trying to break anything up. It was a perfectly happy evening, Detective Inspector.’

  Lovely, perfect, happy. Judy finds Bob’s adjectives interesting, especially in the light of what came later.

  ‘What about Heidi? Do you remember who she spent time with?’

  ‘She collected driftwood with John and I remember her going to the water’s edge with Ailsa. They made quite a picture, silhouetted there. I wished I’d brought my sketchbook.’

  ‘What about Leonard? Did he spend much time with Heidi? After all, she was his guest.’

  ‘Leonard spent most of his time cooking. He always makes such a production out of it.’ A definite note of sourness there. ‘Miles was running around being his commis chef.’

  ‘Miles? Leonard’s husband?’

  ‘Yes. He always tags along to these things.’

  An interesting way of putting it, thinks Judy. She gets out copies of the other photographs.

  ‘Do you remember these being taken?’

  ‘No, but people take so many photos these days.’

  People take photos on their mobile phones, thinks Judy, but the interesting thing about these is that they were printed out, annotated, preserved.

  ‘Who’s the fourth man in this picture?’

  ‘Larry something,’ says Bob. ‘He came to Grey Walls a couple of times. A good man. A simple soul.’

  ‘What about this picture? You and Leonard with Crissy. You’re both looking at her very affectionately.’

  ‘Everyone loves Crissy,’ says Bob. ‘I love her, Leonard loves her, John loves her. Ivor never stopped loving her.’

  ‘Even though he had a perfect relationship with Chantal?’ says Tony.

  ‘Love is complicated,’ says Bob. ‘You’ll find that out one day.’

  ‘One last thing.’ Judy shows the pumpkin badge on her phone. ‘Do you recognise this?’

  ‘A Jack O’Lantern,’ says Bob immediately. ‘It’s an interesting legend. Linked to the lantern men, of course.’

  ‘So we’ve heard,’ says Judy.

  ‘I’ve done a few prints of the lantern men,’ says Bob. ‘They’re for sale downstairs.’

  ‘We’ll have a look on our way out,’ says Judy. She’s certainly not going to part with hard cash for one of Bob Carr’s etchings.

  As they descend the stairs she asks Bob where he was on the evening of last Thursday.

  ‘Here,’ says Bob. ‘Where I always am.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘Chantal dropped in around eight. We had a lovely chat.’

  *

  Nelson is in his office when there’s a knock on the door. No, not a knock, more of a whimsical tattoo, an irritating series of tiny taps.

  ‘Come in,’ he barks.

  ‘It’s only me,’ sings a light soprano.

  He might have guessed. Madge Hudson, supposed expert on criminal profiling. He’s willing to bet that he has Superintendent Archer to thank for this visitation.

  Sure enough. ‘Jo suggested that I pop in to have a chat about Ivor March.’

  ‘Very kind of you.’

  Madge takes the seat opposite. She’s a tall woman, usually trailing scarves and shawls. It’s as if she has a tail, like a dragon. She disentangles a piece of gauze from the arm of the chair and smiles at Nelson.

  Or a crocodile.

  ‘I understand that Ivor has disclosed where the bodies are buried.’ ‘Disclosed’ is a very Madge word and she is always on first-name terms with suspects.

  ‘He told us where to dig, yes.’

  ‘He asked for Dr Ruth Galloway by name, I hear.’

  ‘That’s right,’ says Nelson, keeping his face expressionless.

  ‘Why do you think he did that?’

  It’s always a danger signal when Madge starts asking questions, especially with her head on one side like this.

  Nelson says, still not cracking a smile, ‘I assume it’s because Dr Galloway is the best in her field.’ There’s a joke there somewhere (Ruth often seems to spend her time digging up fields) but he’s not going to attempt it. Madge would only think it was a deflection tactic anyway.

  ‘Or because he thinks that Ruth is a way to get at you.’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

  ‘Ivor knows you’re close to Ruth. This is a way of manipulating you.’

  Nelson wonders what she means by ‘close’. Does Madge know about him and Ruth? He wouldn’t put it past Jo to tell her.

  ‘What did Ivor say when you asked him about the bodies Ruth excavated?’ asks Madge, head so far to the side that a dangling earring gets caught in her scarf.

  ‘He said that he was like Jesus on the cross, abandoned by his followers.’

  ‘That’s very significant,’ says Madge, untangling herself. ‘It means he has a god complex.’

  You don’t say, thinks Nelson.

  ‘And a saviour complex too. Didn’t he say that he was saving these women?’

  Jo had briefed her well. Nelson is rather impressed.

  ‘Yes. Apparently March and his friends went out in a van picking up women and supposedly saving them. I think one of those women is buried in the pub garden.’

  ‘The Jesus thing is interesting,’ says Madge. ‘Jesus sacrificed himself for his followers, didn’t he?’

  He sacrificed himself for all mankind, thinks Nelson, remembering catechism lessons at his old school, St Joseph’s, or Holy Joe’s as it was known locally. Jesus died on the cross so that we could be freed from original sin and ascend to heaven. The gates of purgatory were opened.

  ‘So . . .’ Madge fixes him with an unusually direct look. ‘Who is he saving this time?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Ivor asked Ruth to excavate. As you say, she’s the best in the business. Ivor must have known that she’d find the bodies. He’s always professed his innocence and now, by telling you where to find the victims, he seems to be admitting his guilt. Why would he do that?’

  ‘You tell me,’ says Nelson. But, in fact, this question has been niggling at him for days. He thinks of Tanya saying, ‘But he hasn’t confessed, has he?’, of Ruth asking if March really was a serial killer, even of Cathbad’s lunatic belief that March is innocent.

  ‘There are two possibilities,’ says Madge. And somehow she seems more solid and less floaty. She crosses her arms in a businesslike way. ‘One, March is guilty but he wants to confess. That could account for the religious imagery too. Well, I don’t need to tell you about confession, do I?’

  Nelson stares at her stonily. He regrets ever telling Madge that he was brought up as a Catholic.

  ‘So one possibility is that he wants to confess but he wants to do it in the showiest way possible, hence calling Ruth in. He
enjoys a drama, he likes to take centre stage. He might even think that it would embarrass you, having a woman come up with the conclusive evidence, especially a woman that you’re . . . well, close to. Another possibility is that he’s innocent but he’s protecting someone.’

  ‘Who?’ says Nelson, really wanting to know what her answer will be.

  ‘Someone he loves, of course,’ says Madge, head on one side again.

  Chapter 24

  Tanya arrives at Grey Walls to find Crissy Martin leading a meditation session. It’s quite embarrassing, the front door is open so Tanya and Bradley walk straight in to find four women lying on their backs on the sitting room floor, slowly waving their legs in the air. Tanya hesitates in the doorway, assailed by whale music and the scent of patchouli oil.

  Crissy is sitting cross-legged at the front. Her eyes are closed. Tanya clears her throat.

  ‘I’ll be with you in a second, Detective Sergeant,’ says Crissy.

  Tanya wonders how the hell Crissy identified her so easily. They have met before, of course, when Tanya interviewed Crissy but, even so, it’s quite something to recognise a person with your eyes shut. She got her rank right too.

  Crissy takes her time winding up the session. The women are told to imagine their bodies filling with light and then to feel their earthly bonds breaking and their souls floating up into the ether. ‘You will leave your corporeal worries behind you. How small they look from the heavens.’ Tanya knows that Bradley is trying not to laugh. She just feels deeply irritated.

  When the women have floated out of the room Crissy offers herbal tea or water. Tanya doesn’t drink caffeine but she has a sudden compulsion to ask for a double espresso. They both ask for water. It’s another hot day and Bradley’s air conditioning wasn’t working on the drive over. Crissy fetches a jug and glasses and leads the way onto the veranda.

  ‘We won’t be interrupted here. The clients are working in their rooms.’

  ‘Are they all writers?’ asks Tanya.

  ‘This group are but the retreats are open to anyone who requires spiritual refreshment.’

  ‘How much does a retreat cost?’

  Crissy tells her and Tanya rapidly changes her opinion of the guests from ‘mugs’ to ‘mugs with money’. Judy told her that Ruth had spent a week here. Who knew that archaeology was so lucrative?