The Night Hawks

by Griffiths, Elly

  ‘Taking a look at the site,’ says Alan. ‘Oh, this is Paul. A friend of mine.’

  Paul. The name sounds vaguely familiar to Ruth. She assumes the tall man is another of the wretched Night Hawks.

  ‘The site shouldn’t really be disturbed,’ says Ruth. ‘Especially since human remains were found here.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Alan assures her. ‘We were just looking.’

  Ruth thinks that ‘just looking’ is the opposite of the Night Hawks’ motto. The man called Paul, though, looks rather uncomfortable.

  ‘Human remains?’ he says.

  ‘We found a skeleton here,’ says Ruth. ‘Probably Bronze Age. We’ll know more when we get the test results back.’

  ‘Do you know when that will be?’ says Alan, bouncing on his toes to show his eagerness.

  ‘By the end of this week, I hope.’

  ‘It’s very interesting,’ Alan tells his friend. ‘David. My old school friend, David Brown. He’s a renowned archaeologist and he was telling me that Bronze Age people carried a virus that effectively wiped out the native population.’

  Paul now looks positively terrified. ‘A virus?’ he repeats.

  ‘A deadly virus,’ says Alan. ‘They brought it with them from Central Europe. The natives had no immunity, you see.’

  Ruth knows she’s being irrational, but she’s irritated by this. For one thing, David Brown is hardly a renowned archaeologist – she’s the one who’s written three books and appeared on TV, for God’s sake. And for another, she’s fed up with the virus narrative being put forward as fact.

  ‘David’s told me his theory,’ she says. ‘He works for me at the university.’

  ‘He’s a great admirer of yours,’ says Alan, which mollifies Ruth slightly.

  ‘That’s nice,’ she says. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to your walk.’

  She doesn’t think that they’ll dare disturb the trench again. Besides, it’s getting dark and the wind is getting stronger. Her last view is of the tarpaulin rising and falling like a sail on a sea of sand.

  ‘This must be the firm,’ says Judy, staring at her computer screen. ‘It’s the only one with a black dog on it.’

  The dog, its mouth open in a bark, reminds Judy of pictures she has seen of a mosaic at Pompeii. Cave Canem. She must persuade Cathbad to let them fly to Italy for a holiday.

  ‘“Cambridge Bioresearch,”’ reads Nelson aloud over her shoulder. ‘“Directors: Dr Douglas Noakes, Dr Claudia Albertini.” I think we need to talk to this Dr Albertini.’

  ‘Summer said that the drugs trial was all above board. It’s legal to pay people for this sort of thing.’

  ‘It might be legal but there’s something odd going on. For one thing, one of the directors is dead. Possibly murdered. To say nothing of the fact that there could be another body buried in his back garden. Sounds a tiny bit dodgy to me.’

  It’s always a bad sign when the boss tries to do irony.

  ‘Is Ruth going to dig up the garden?’ Judy asks.

  ‘Yes. I’m hoping she can do it tomorrow or the next day.’

  ‘Tanya’s spoken to Paul and Chloe Noakes again,’ says Judy. ‘They both say they don’t know anything about their father’s work.’

  ‘Chloe must know something. She’s a doctor, for God’s sake. Get Tanya to interview her again. No, you talk to her. I’m sure the family are hiding something.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ says Judy. She’s thinking that she’ll have to move very carefully to avoid ruffling Tanya’s feathers.

  When Nelson has departed, in a hurry as usual, Judy gathers up her things and prepares to leave. On the way home, she thinks of the company with the dog on its logo and of Jem’s mother saying, ‘He couldn’t swim. He was terrified of water.’ When she gets in Michael is playing the piano, Cathbad is cooking supper and Miranda is trying to teach Thing to dance.

  ‘It’s for Britain’s Got Talent. We’re doing it at school for poor children.’

  Judy thinks that the charity would probably rather have a direct debit. She hugs her daughter and Thing takes advantage of his trainer’s distraction to escape into the garden.

  ‘Good day?’ says Cathbad, leaning over to give her a kiss. He smells of lemongrass.

  ‘OK. I had to see some bereaved parents. That’s always tough.’

  ‘You need to put a protective circle around yourself,’ says Cathbad, turning back to the food. ‘I’ll show you how.’

  ‘Thanks,’ says Judy. Cathbad has shown her before and she sometimes tries to chant a protective mantra under her breath. It never seems to work, though.

  Cathbad puts the lid on the saucepan and opens the fridge door.

  ‘Glass of wine?’ he says, his face lit by the blue glow.

  ‘Yes, please.’ They try not to drink in the week but, Judy tells herself, in the absence of a protective circle, alcohol will take the edge off the day.

  Cathbad pours them both glasses of Winbirri white. Through the French windows they can see Miranda ­polkaing with Thing in the garden.

  ‘Ruth’s going to excavate the garden at Black Dog Farm tomorrow,’ says Judy.

  ‘It’s the feast of Our Lady of Walsingham today,’ says Cathbad. ‘A good omen.’

  ‘If you say so,’ says Judy. She hasn’t forgotten the events that happened in Walsingham a few years ago. She takes a deep swig of wine.

  ‘I heard from Alan White this afternoon,’ says Cathbad.

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘The Hawks are going out on Thursday night. He invited me to join them.’

  ‘Where are they going?’

  ‘Blakeney Point. They want to see if there are any other Bronze Age relics. Alan is sure that there must be more, maybe even some more bodies.’

  ‘Ruth won’t like that,’ says Judy. ‘Are you going to go?’

  ‘I think so, if it’s OK with you. For one thing, I can stop them damaging the original site. For another . . .’

  He pauses, looking out into the garden, where Thing is now barking at a seagull.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Alan said that he wanted to talk to me about something. He said he couldn’t tell me on the phone.’

  ‘Have you any idea what it could be?’

  ‘He said something about telling the police. Asked me whether he could trust them.’

  ‘I hope you said yes.’

  ‘I said that you and DCI Nelson were both eminently trustworthy.’

  This is probably as good as she can expect. Cathbad is no fan of the police in general and, sometimes, looking at events around the world, Judy agrees with him.

  ‘Do you have any idea why he was asking?’ she says.

  ‘I think he’s scared. He said, “I think I’ve heard the Black Shuck barking.”’

  Despite the cosy kitchen, the piano music and the scent of lemongrass, Judy feels her skin crawl.

  ‘What do you think he meant by that?’

  ‘I think he’s had a premonition of his own death,’ says Cathbad calmly. ‘I’ve a feeling that’s why he’s asked me to go along. For protection.’

  Protection again. For such a benign concept, thinks Judy, the word has a very sinister sound.

  Chapter 17

  It’s a misty morning when Ruth starts the dig at Black Dog Farm. As she bumps along the track to the house, she can only see a few feet in front of her. It’s like driving into grey, swirling nothingness. If the weather doesn’t clear, they may have to postpone the excavation. She’s meeting Ted at the house and has booked a mechanical digger for the afternoon. It will be a real pain if she has to reschedule.

  The house appears windows first, like the Cheshire Cat’s grin. She sees the dark frames, sinister in their very symmetry, then the door, then the roof with the weathercock, invisible but creaking gently. The mist blows around the farm build
ings like smoke. There are two other cars parked in the yard and Ruth is surprised to see that Nelson is already there, talking to Ted.

  ‘Nice day for it,’ Nelson greets her.

  ‘Do you think it’ll clear?’ Ruth addresses her question to Ted who includes weather divination as one of his many skills.

  ‘Bound to. It’s just a sea fret blown inland.’

  They walk round to the back garden. Here the mist is low-lying, leaving the trees floating and the broken swing hanging in mid-air.

  ‘Where do we start?’ says Ted.

  ‘There are some nettles right in the middle.’

  ‘The middle it is, then.’

  Ted is accompanied by Steve, another field archaeologist. Together they get the equipment from their van including a resistivity metre, two poles attached to a metal bar with prongs at either end.

  ‘What’s that?’ says Nelson. ‘A metal detector? I thought you didn’t approve of them.’

  Sometimes Ruth wonders if he does it just to annoy her.

  ‘It measures electrical resistance,’ she tells him. ‘Burials create a pattern of resistance, if a hole has been dug here then there’ll be a higher water content in the soil. The resistivity metre helps us plot this.’

  Ted cuts the nettles and long grass with a scythe, allowing Steve to insert the metal prongs into the earth at regular intervals. Ruth plots their progress on a data log. She thinks how much Phil would have enjoyed this. He loves geophysics, the more technical equipment needed the better. She has a feeling that David, with his professed liking for getting ‘down and dirty’, would disapprove.

  The mist is dispersing now and the rooks watch them from the elm tree.

  Nelson watches them for a few minutes, but it always irritates him to be a spectator. He knows that Jo would think it a waste of his highly paid time to be present at the excavation. It’s a DC’s job, if that. But Nelson had felt drawn back to the house. He’s sure that there is something buried in the strange, oppressive garden. And, if he’s honest with himself, he wanted to see Ruth. It always fascinated him to see her at work, so calm and composed, able – it seems – to see beneath the earth itself. Electrical resistance, high water content, it’s all meaningless to him. What matters is that Ruth can tell where the bodies are buried. He’s seen her do it before.

  But he can’t stand around all morning. Nelson walks round to the front of the house, wondering whether to go back to the station. He can always drop in again later in the day. In the meantime, young Tony can keep an eye on things. As he approaches his car, he sees another vehicle bumping along the uneven track, a smart jeep-like affair being driven with extreme care. Nelson recognises the driver and starts to smile.

  ‘Well, if it’s not DI Dave Clough.’

  Clough emerges from his vehicle, brushing imaginary specks from his leather jacket. Since his promotion and move to Cambridge, he has begun dressing in a way that is both fashionable and, in Nelson’s opinion, far too young for him. But maybe the fault lies with Clough’s wife ­Cassandra, a glamorous ex-actress who used to criticise Clough for ‘looking like a policeman’. This, in Nelson’s book, is not an insult but he’s pleased to see his ex-sergeant, ridiculous jacket or not.

  ‘Lost your motorbike?’ he says.

  ‘Can’t believe that thing’s still running.’ Clough points at Nelson’s Mercedes.

  ‘It’s a classic. It’ll keep running for ever.’

  ‘You or the car?’

  They shake hands. Clough looks well, Nelson thinks. He also can’t imagine why on earth he’s here.

  ‘Thought I’d come to see your murder scene,’ says Clough, as if Nelson had asked the question.

  ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘Judy said that Ruth was digging up the garden.’

  There’s no need for either of them to say more.

  ‘Creepy-looking house,’ says Clough. ‘Murder-suicide wasn’t it? DODI?’

  ‘Possibly,’ says Nelson. ‘It’s possible there’s also a body buried in the garden.’

  Clough gives a low whistle. ‘Interesting. Guy who owned this place worked in Cambridge. Ran a scientific research place.’

  ‘I know. Judy’s there today.’

  Clough looks down, scuffing the concrete with his trendy looking trainers. Nelson waits.

  ‘It’s him I’ve come to talk to you about,’ says Clough. ‘Douglas Noakes. Dr Noakes.’

  ‘Yes?’

  By mutual consent they come to lean against Nelson’s car. Clough says, ‘You remember my brother Mark?’

  Whatever Nelson expected, it wasn’t this. Nelson doesn’t know Mark Clough personally. He thinks he’s seen him twice, once at Clough’s wedding and once when he was seriously ill in hospital. He does know that Mark was once a petty criminal. It was Mark’s encounter with a sympathetic policeman that had inspired his younger brother Dave in his career.

  ‘Mark’s straight now,’ says Clough, sounding slightly defensive. ‘But he still hears things. He still knows people. You know what I mean.’

  Nelson knows.

  ‘Well, he’s heard a few things about Dr Noakes.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘That he was paying ex-cons to test drugs for him.’

  ‘Where did Mark hear this?’ says Nelson.

  ‘He wouldn’t say but I could lean on him a bit. Mark knew the lad who was found on the beach. Jem something. Said he was a good kid at heart. He wanted to make some money to take his girlfriend on holiday. Noakes got him to do a drugs trial. Next thing, he’s dead. What did the post mortem say?’

  ‘Got the results today. No water in his lungs.’

  ‘So he was dead before he went into the water?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘Anything odd in his blood?’

  ‘There’s nothing in the report but I suppose they weren’t looking. The girlfriend knew about the drugs trial but she thought it was all above board. There’s something dodgy going on though. Douglas Noakes left a suicide note. It said something about a body in the garden.’

  ‘That’s why Ruth is digging?’

  ‘That’s why.’

  ‘If he left a note,’ says Clough, ‘that points to suicide.’

  ‘It does. And Noakes’s prints were on the gun. Unfortunately, they were from his right hand and he was left-handed.’

  ‘Bloody hell. So it could be a double murder.’

  ‘It could.’

  There’s a silence broken by Ruth appearing from the garden, rather muddy and bramble-scratched.

  ‘Nelson— Oh, hi, Clough. Nelson, we’ve found something.’

  Cambridge Bioresearch is a discreet-looking building on the outskirts of Cambridge. Judy visited Ruth a few times when she was teaching at St Jude’s and had always felt overawed by the town of Cambridge, by the general sense of privacy and scholarship and signs saying ‘don’t walk on the grass’. This is just a unit in an industrial estate, identifiable only by the barking dog logo. Judy waits in a reception area that gives no hint of the work that the company might do: pink walls, grey sofas, bland watercolours of mountain scenery, a coffee table devoid of any reading matter, water cooler humming gently. The receptionist tells her that Dr Albertini will be with her ‘directly’, a word that seems to offer much but mean very little. Judy gazes at the nearest mountaintop and tries not to fiddle with her phone.

  ‘DI Johnson?’

  The woman seems to have materialised while Judy was lost in the Alps.

  Claudia Albertini is tall and elegant, wearing a white coat with her name embroidered on the chest pocket. Her dark hair is drawn back into a ponytail and she’s wearing those narrow, gold-rimmed glasses that automatically make Judy feel intellectually inferior.

  ‘So sorry to keep you waiting.’

  There’s a slight accent. I
talian perhaps? Cathbad speaks Italian and has been teaching Judy and the kids. Should she try a few words or would that seem incredibly presumptuous?

  ‘It’s very good of you to see me,’ says Judy. ‘I’m sure you’re very busy.’

  Claudia makes a gesture that seems half resignation, half frustration. ‘It’s been a very difficult few days.’

  ‘Dr Noakes’s death must have been a terrible shock for you.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Claudia. ‘We have worked together for a long time. Shall we?’

  They take the lift to the second floor and Claudia shows Judy into her office, another bland room with more mountain peaks.

  ‘Coffee? Tea?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ You’re meant to accept refreshments from interviewees but Judy doesn’t want to take up too much of the doctor’s time. Already she can see her foot, shod in an expensive-looking loafer, tapping under the table.

  ‘How long have you worked with Douglas Noakes?’ asks Judy.

  ‘Ten years,’ says Claudia. ‘We set up this company together. Douglas was working at another company in Cambridge and I was doing research in Zurich.’

  Ah, she’s Swiss. That explains the mountains – and the accent.

  ‘What sort of work is it that you do?’

  ‘We’re an early stage contract research organisation,’ says Claudia. She must have registered the lack of comprehension in Judy’s face because she shifts into a lower gear. ‘We support the pharmaceutical, biotechnical and medical industries by outsourcing research. Specifically, we develop new medicines and drugs and test them both in vitro and in vivo.’

  ‘In vitro is test tubes?’

  ‘Yes. And in vivo is in living subjects.’

  ‘Humans?’

  ‘And animals. Yes.’

  ‘Do you advertise for people to take part in clinical trials?’

  ‘Sometimes, yes.’

  ‘Could you tell me if someone called Jeremy – Jem – Taylor took part in a trial recently?’

  Claudia opens a laptop on her desk, so slim and discreet that Judy had not noticed it before. She taps for a few seconds, making no sound. Her fingernails must be as short as a piano player’s. Michael’s piano teacher, Mrs Mazzini, is always going on about nails.