The Stone Circle: The Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries 11

by Elly Griffiths

  They are at the trench now. Ruth can see the cist, solid slabs of stone interspersed with smaller pebbles, a dark void in the centre. A young archaeologist is kneeling down scraping away lichen but it looks almost as if he is in prayer.

  ‘The roof stone was a metre wide,’ says Leif. ‘Quite a substantial tomb. Particularly for a young woman.’

  Does Leif mean that a woman couldn’t deserve an impressive memorial? Erik would never have implied such a thing. He knew that there are many prehistorical graves where women were buried with great care and ritual. And, even if some of these women had been killed as sacrifices to some cruel and faceless god, they were still important.

  Ruth looks around her. The sand stretches away on either side, grey and blue, giving way to windswept grass and marshland. The henge must have been visible for miles, silhouetted against the sky. She thinks of Erik’s words: The landscape itself is important. This is a liminal zone, between land and water, sea and sky . . .

  ‘Cists are sometimes called flat cemeteries,’ says Leif, reading her mind in a way that she finds rather disturbing. ‘They often occur in environments like this, flat land on the edge of water. It could be that the water represented rebirth or renewal in some way.’

  Ruth feels that, with the reincarnation of Erik standing in front of her, she should steer clear of the subjects of rebirth and renewal. ‘Have you looked at the grave goods?’ she says briskly. ‘There was an urn, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Leif. ‘It contained seeds from wild fruit – blackberry, sloe and hazelnuts. Sustenance for the afterlife. There was something else though that I thought was significant.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Ruth, ‘what?’

  ‘A stone with a hole through the middle, found beside the urn. Such stones have powerful magical qualities.’

  He smiles as he says this, reminding Ruth not of Erik, but of Cathbad.

  ‘Stones like that have been found in Neolithic sites,’ says Ruth. ‘I was reading about a causewayed enclosure in Whitehawk, near Brighton. There were bodies buried there alongside fossils called shepherds’ crowns, stones with holes through them too.’

  ‘Hag stones,’ says Leif. ‘Odin stones. Holy stones. They have lots of names. They are meant to guard against witches and all kinds of evil. Some stories say that if you look through the hole you will see the fairy folk.’

  Once again, Ruth feels that they are wandering along a slightly dangerous path. She does not want to discuss the fairy folk – or Odin – with Erik’s son.

  ‘Was it just one stone?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes,’ says Leif. ‘That makes it more significant, no?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ says Ruth. ‘Could I look in the trench now? I’d like to see the layers.’

  *

  Ruth enjoys the chance – rare these days – of doing some actual excavation, the combination of heavy labour and precision, the feeling of working in the open air, the February sun surprisingly warm on her back even though her fingers and toes are soon frozen. She is just starting to work on an interesting section when a shadow falls over the neat line of soil and subsoil.

  ‘Found anything interesting?’

  Ruth straightens up. ‘Hi, Nelson.’

  He looms above her, blocking out the sun in his dark police jacket. Ruth tries to climb nimbly out of the trench but ends up having to take Nelson’s proffered hand. His grip is very strong. Ruth lets go as soon as she is on solid ground.

  ‘Is this the stone whatsit?’ he says.

  ‘The cist? Yes.’

  ‘It’s just a hole with some stones in it.’

  It’s lucky that Nelson says annoying things like this sometimes. It stops Ruth fantasising about him.

  ‘It’s probably early Bronze Age,’ she says. ‘A very significant find.’

  ‘It’s near the other one, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ruth knows that they are both thinking not of the wooden henge, but of the child’s body she found inside it. She remembers the moment with all her senses; the mist rising from the sea, the waterlogged ground under her feet, the seagulls calling high above, the little arm emerging from its shallow grave . . .

  ‘Who’s in charge?’ Nelson is saying. He is pawing the ground like a horse, a characteristically impatient gesture.

  ‘Well,’ says Ruth, ‘this might come as a bit of a shock . . .’

  But it’s too late. Leif is walking towards them, smiling a welcome, teeth very white against his tanned skin.

  ‘Leif,’ says Ruth, ‘this is DCI Nelson from the King’s Lynn police. Nelson, this is Leif Anderssen, the archaeologist in charge of the dig. He’s Erik’s son.’

  Leif continues to hold out his hand and, after a second’s hesitation, Nelson grasps it.

  ‘DCI Nelson,’ says Leif. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  ‘None of it good, I’m sure.’

  ‘Not at all, my father had a great respect for you.’ Ruth wonders how Leif can possibly know this, unless he was in closer contact with his father than she thought. Erik always used to say that he saw his children as ‘free, independent spirits’, which also seemed to be an excuse for rarely seeing them.

  ‘It’s all water under the bridge now,’ says Nelson, employing a rather unfortunate cliché, given Erik’s death from drowning. Erik’s body had been found in a marshy pool only a few hundred metres from where they stand now.

  ‘Indeed,’ says Leif. ‘The world turns and life continues. To what do we owe the honour, DCI Nelson?’

  Ruth can see Nelson thinking as clearly as if there was a bubble over his head. She knows that he won’t want to tell Leif about the letter but how else to explain his presence?

  ‘I came to see Dr Galloway,’ he says at last. ‘I need her help on a police matter.’

  ‘I should be going anyway,’ says Ruth. ‘I’ve got a seminar at twelve. Do let me know when you get the test results.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Leif. ‘I hope to see you again.’

  Ruth holds out her hand but Leif leans forward and kisses her on both cheeks. Even though he is standing behind her Ruth can tell that Nelson is glowering.

  *

  They sit in Nelson’s car, which is parked next to Ruth’s. Nelson drums his fingers on the steering wheel as Ruth reads the letter.

  ‘It’s very like the others,’ she says at last. ‘Even the quote from T. S. Eliot.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘“That corpse you buried in your garden, has it begun to sprout?” I think it’s from The Wasteland. Also the bit about our end being our beginning. That sounds like T. S. Eliot.’

  ‘Your friend Shona. She helped with the literary stuff last time, didn’t she?’

  Ruth is silent for a moment. Shona Maclean, an English Literature lecturer at the university, did help Erik with the letters last time but, over the years, she has allowed herself to forget this. At the time she had felt betrayed but friends are too valuable to lose. Shona has a child now too and that has formed another bond. After a holiday in Italy last summer, Ruth and Shona are closer than ever.

  ‘Anyone can find quotes like this,’ she says.

  ‘Anyone who knew what the previous letters were like.’

  ‘Who would have known?’

  ‘We never made them public,’ says Nelson. ‘Didn’t want any copycats sending us their lunatic scribblings. But word always gets out. Everyone in the station must have known.’

  And Shona knew, Ruth thinks. And Cathbad.

  ‘There are certainly similarities,’ she says. ‘The way he addresses you personally, the Biblical references. “Oh ye of little faith.”’

  ‘That’s Doubting Thomas, isn’t it?’ says Nelson. ‘The one who doesn’t believe that Jesus has come back from the dead.’

  ‘Full marks for religious knowledge.’

  ‘He’s one of my favourite characters. Always ask for evidence. Thomas would have made a good policeman.’

  Ruth wonders whether Nelson is contemplating calling his son
Thomas. Kate says the new baby will be called George but Ruth doesn’t know where she got this information. Ruth looks at the typed letter, in its plastic sleeve, on her lap. The year is turning. The shoots rise from the grass. What did Leif say just now? The world turns and life continues. It’s a fairly standard new-agey sort of phrase but there is an uncomfortable echo. Is it just a coincidence that Leif appeared at the same time as the letter?

  ‘Actually the phrase occurs a few times in the Old and New Testaments,’ she says. Her parents were evangelical Christians, fond of quoting the Bible. ‘But it’s nice to know that you’ve got a favourite saint.’

  Nelson doesn’t rise to the bait. ‘There’s another thing,’ he says. ‘You know it was Valentine’s Day yesterday?’

  ‘No,’ says Ruth. ‘Was it?’ This is partly ironical (who could escape it?) but also she doesn’t want Nelson to think that she spent the whole day waiting in vain for a card that never came.

  Nelson misses the sarcasm anyway. ‘Someone left a paper bag on my doorstep,’ he says. ‘There was a note with it. “Greetings from Jack Valentine.” Apparently it’s some sort of Norfolk tradition.’

  ‘What was in the bag?’

  ‘Just a stone.’

  ‘With a hole through it?’

  Nelson stares at her. ‘How the hell did you know that?’

  ‘There was a stone with a hole in found inside the cist,’ says Ruth. ‘We think it dates back to the Bronze Age.’

  ‘So whoever sent me the letter might have known about the dig?’

  ‘Maybe,’ says Ruth, ‘but those stones are fairly common. There are lots of legends attached to them.’

  ‘I know,’ says Nelson. ‘Judy was telling me some of them. She gets it all from Cathbad. But it’s a coincidence and I don’t like coincidences.’

  Ruth is about to answer when she sees a figure running across the car park towards them. It’s the young archaeologist from the dig. Nelson winds down the window.

  ‘We need Dr Galloway,’ pants the archaeologist.

  ‘Why?’ says Ruth. But she already knows.

  ‘We’ve found some bones.’

  *

  Ruth and Nelson follow the man, whose name is Vikram, back along the gravel path towards the sand dunes. The brief burst of sunshine has gone and the day is grey and cold again. When they reach the site they find Leif in the trench with two other archaeologists, a man and a woman. They stand aside for Ruth.

  The bones are about half a metre down, white against the sandy soil. Ruth can see an arm, possibly a radius or an ulna. Silently Leif hands her a trowel and a brush and, for a few minutes, Ruth works to expose the bones. She doesn’t want to excavate them yet because the context will be important. She can see already that there is a grave cut in the soil above. Someone has put this body in the ground deliberately. It takes about twenty minutes for Ruth to be sure of two things. One, there is a complete skeleton here. Two, it’s relatively recent.

  ‘How can you tell?’ says Nelson, leaning over her shoulder.

  Ruth points her torch to where part of the skull is visible. A piece of metal glints back at them.

  ‘A filling,’ says Nelson.

  ‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘That will be useful for ageing. And there should be dental records too.’

  There’s a third thing too. The rounded ends of long bones, the epiphyses, are still growing in children as new cartilage gets added. In late adolescence these fuse with the main part of the bone. The bones are slender too, fragile-looking. Ruth is pretty sure that she is looking at the bones of a child.

  Chapter 5

  ‘We need to look at missing children from the last ten or twenty years,’ says Nelson. ‘Maybe even thirty. Ruth couldn’t be sure of the exact age of the bones without doing more tests but there was a filling, the old silver sort.’

  ‘They haven’t been used since the eighties, have they?’ says Judy. ‘It’s all white fillings now.’

  ‘I haven’t got any fillings,’ says Clough, grinning to show annoyingly perfect teeth.

  ‘That’s amazing,’ says Tanya seriously, ‘given the amount of sugar you eat.’

  ‘How old did Ruth think this child was?’ asks Judy, who is taking notes on her iPad.

  ‘She thought early teens, about twelve or thirteen. Apparently bones have end bits on them that disappear when children finish growing. Different bones fuse at different rates – I didn’t follow it all – but the humerus hadn’t fused and that usually happens at about fourteen. So we’re almost certainly looking at a prepubescent.’

  ‘Do we know if it’s a boy or a girl?’ asks Clough.

  ‘Ruth says that she might be able to tell from the pelvic bones when she does the full excavation but apparently it’s difficult with a prepubescent skeleton.’

  ‘Can she get DNA from the bones?’ asks Judy.

  ‘Possibly. But again that depends on all sorts of things. You know what these archaeologists are like. They never give you a straight answer.’

  The team are used to Nelson’s impatience with all experts, including Ruth, but there is a palpable sense of anticipation in the briefing room. They have a body and there’s a chance that they will be able to close one of the cases that all police forces dread, when a child apparently vanishes into thin air.

  ‘If they’ve been missing for more than ten years we’ll have done a review,’ says Tanya, opening her laptop.

  ‘That’s true,’ says Nelson, ‘so we need to look at the neighbouring forces too. There can’t be that many cases that are still open. I’ll speak to my old sergeant Freddie Burnett. Who else was working here thirty years ago?’

  ‘Tom Henty,’ says Clough. ‘He’s been here for ever.’

  ‘And Marj Maccallum,’ says Judy. ‘She came in to see me last year. When I was acting DI,’ she can’t help adding. ‘Marj was a WPC here in the seventies and eighties, when such things existed.’

  ‘I remember Marj,’ says Nelson. ‘She was still here when I was first made DCI. She was a good cop, very sharp.’

  ‘I’ll ring her,’ says Judy.

  ‘Good idea,’ says Nelson, ‘but there’s something else I want you to do first. Clough and Fuller, you keep looking in the files.’

  Both Clough and Tanya look briefly mutinous as Nelson ushers Judy into his office. Then Tanya turns back to her laptop and Clough finds a half-eaten Mars bar in his pocket and eats it thoughtfully.

  *

  Ruth is forced to cancel her seminar and so is met by Phil muttering about ‘client expectations’. ‘Now that people are paying nine grand a year they expect a better service.’

  ‘They’re not clients,’ says Ruth, unlocking her office. ‘They’re students. I’ll reschedule the seminar but I couldn’t really leave the site. They’d just found a dead body.’

  She can see that Phil is torn between wanting to know about the dead body and wanting to lecture her about timekeeping. In the end curiosity wins.

  ‘Is the body modern?’ he says, sliding into her office as soon as the door is open.

  Ruth’s office is so small that two people standing up make it feel crowded. Ruth sits behind her desk and, after some hesitation, Phil takes the visitors’ chair. Her poster of Indiana Jones looks down at him disapprovingly.

  ‘The bones don’t look that old,’ she says. ‘I’ll excavate tomorrow and send samples for carbon-14 and isotope analysis.’

  ‘Is it a murder case then?’ says Phil. Ruth knows that he is deeply envious of her links with the Serious Crimes Unit. Phil is also Shona’s partner, which means that he is up to date with the gossip.

  ‘Possibly,’ says Ruth. ‘DCI Nelson was actually at the site when the bones were uncovered.’ She hopes she isn’t blushing.

  ‘Was he? Why was that?’

  ‘Just checking up on the dig, I expect. Do you know who’s running it?’

  ‘Someone from UCL?’

  ‘Leif Anderssen. Erik’s son.’

  Phil’s lips purse in a silent whistle. ‘Erik
the Viking’s son? What’s he doing in England?’

  ‘He’s an expert on stone artefacts, apparently. You know they found a stone cist in the centre of the circle?’

  ‘I read the reports. They wanted my opinion but I didn’t have time to visit the site. There’s so much extra work now I’m Dean.’

  Phil mentions his recent appointment as Temporary Dean of Natural Sciences roughly once every fifteen minutes.

  ‘Lucky I’ve got so much free time, then,’ says Ruth. ‘The timbers and the cist look early Bronze Age. We’re still waiting for carbon-14 on the bones in the cist.’

  ‘Just like old times,’ says Phil. ‘You and Nelson hunting for a killer on the Saltmarsh.’

  Ruth stares at him. Can he really be saying those words so lightly? Can anyone, even Phil, not be aware of how much the last case cost her, how many lives were lost or changed for ever?

  ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ she says. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I need to prepare for my next seminar.’

  But after Phil has oozed out Ruth stays staring into space for the next ten minutes. Does the discovery of the bones mean that she is about to be involved in another murder investigation? What will it be like to be working closely with Nelson again, especially with Michelle’s baby about to be born any day? The whole thing – the dig on the Saltmarsh, Erik’s son materialising – feels uncomfortably like one of those dreams where the past replays itself but with certain details subtly altered. When she first dug on these marshes she was in her twenties, single, just about to embark on her academic career. Now she’s still single but she has a seven-year-old daughter and an extremely complicated romantic past. Her career, too, seems to have stalled. She’s a senior lecturer at UNN but it’s a fairly lowly institution in the middle of nowhere. She should really be looking for a new job at a better university. She has written two books which were well received in academic circles even if they didn’t trouble the best-seller lists. She gazes up at her poster. What would Indy do?

  She is roused by a buzz from her wrist.