‘How are you doing?’ It is Irish Ted, peering over the lip of the trench like Mr Punch.
‘Not bad. Skeleton’s almost exposed. Just got a few more drawings to do.’
‘We’ve found something. Want to see?’
Ruth straightens up. Sometimes she feels faint if she gets up too quickly but today she seems miraculously well. Maybe it’s the famous second trimester, where, according to the books, you look ‘blooming’ and have tremendous energy and a renewed sex drive. Sounds fun, thinks Ruth as she follows Ted through the maze of walls and trenches. Something to look forward to at any rate.
At the back of the house some outhouses still remain, their doors hanging crazily, windows smashed. There is also the remains of a conservatory, a skeletal wood frame that still retains a few unbroken panes. As Ruth passes, a workman is systematically smashing the glass. One window obviously contained stained glass, red and blue and yellow. The shards scatter at Ruth’s feet like a rainbow.
She follows Ted past the outhouses and into the grounds. Here the new buildings are going up quickly; neat squares of brick and plasterboard. She steps over a cucumber frame, the glass smashed to powder, and passes a tree with a frayed rope hanging from one of its branches. A swing? Broken flagstones form a rudimentary path through the mud. The noise of the cement mixers is deafening.
As directed by Ruth, Ted has dug new trenches along the boundaries of the site, next to the high flint wall. In one of these, Trace is standing, wearing a pink T-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘Killer Barbie’.
Ruth looks into the trench. A tiny skeleton lies exposed about a metre below the topsoil. Only this time it is definitely not human.
‘What is it?’ shouts Ruth, above the noise of the machinery.
‘A cat, I think,’ says Ted.
‘Pet cemetery?’
‘Maybe, though I haven’t seen any others.’
They haven’t found any human bodies either which, given that this was supposed to be a churchyard, is surprising. Disappointing, the county archaeologist would say. Maybe the site was cleared by the Victorians. It wouldn’t be the first archaeological site they had ruined. Ruth looks at the bones protruding from the mud. From the shape of the tail, she is pretty sure that it is feline.
‘Family pet?’ she suggests, thinking of Flint.
‘Yes…’ Ted looks at her sideways. ‘Except…’
‘What?’
‘It’s headless.’
‘What?’
‘There’s no head. Trace and I are both sure.’
Ruth looks again at the bones. She can see the vertebrae and the tail wrapped neatly around the feet but… no head.
‘Log it,’ she says. ‘I’ll take the bones back to the lab.’
‘Wonder what we’ll find next?’ says Ted cheerily. ‘The Headless Horseman?’
Ted’s good humour, thinks Ruth, as she trudges back to her trench, is starting to get her down.
In the afternoon, Clough puts in an appearance. ‘The boss has gone down to Sussex to interview some priest who used to run this place,’ he explains.
‘Pin it on the pervert priest,’ says Ted, taking a swig from his flask, ‘good idea.’
Ruth feels rather embarrassed that she and the others have been caught on their tea break but Clough joins them readily enough, accepting a Jammy Dodger from Trace and a mug of coffee from Ruth. They are sitting on a low internal wall, still covered with wallpaper, dark red with a faint black pattern.
‘Boss turns out to be a left-footer,’ says Clough. ‘Did you know that?’ he turns to Ruth.
‘A left…? Oh, a Catholic. No. Why should I?’ She doesn’t want Clough to think she knows Nelson all that well.
‘We’ve found some other people who worked here. Ordinary people, not priests or nuns. Even tracked down some of the residents. It’s going to be a hard job taking all the statements.’
‘Won’t you get overtime?’ asks Ruth drily.
‘Oh yes,’ Clough grins, ‘thank God for overtime. Anyway, you find out any more about the skeleton?’
‘No,’ says Ruth patiently. ‘As I explained yesterday, I need to examine it thoroughly in context before we can take the bones away.’
‘How long will that take?’
‘I’m hoping to finish tomorrow. I’ve got to bag and record all the bones and take soil samples.’
‘That long? Just for a few bones?’
‘There are two hundred and six bones in the human body,’ says Ruth tartly, ‘and about three hundred in a child’s.’
‘Oh well.’ Clough stands up, brushing crumbs from his chinos (like Nelson, he wears plain clothes – very plain in Nelson’s case). ‘Better get back to the ranch. No peace for the wicked.’
A cliché, like many of Clough’s utterances but as Ruth goes back to work in her trench she finds the phrase reverberating in her mind. No peace for the wicked. Were these bones at peace? Is she now disturbing them? Did something wicked happen here, however many years ago? Did somebody kill this child? And what about the cat?
No peace for the wicked. Cathbad would say that places retain memories of evil. This site is spooky enough, with its half-ruined Gothic walls, its grandiose arch, the staircases and doors leading to nowhere. Cathbad would also say that Ruth should be careful, disturbing the dead, meddling with the past. But that is her job. She is a forensic archaeologist. It is her job to excavate the body and discover clues from the bones, from the burial, from the very texture of the earth. It is all very straightforward and there is nothing to get excited about.
Nevertheless, when the light starts to fade and Ted and Trace pack up their tools, Ruth goes with them. Being sensible is one thing; staying on the site after dark is another.
CHAPTER 9
‘So you were resident at the Sacred Heart Children’s Home for how long?’
‘Three years. I came when I was thirteen. I left when I was sixteen. Father Hennessey got me an apprenticeship. I owe him everything really.’
The speaker, a mild-looking man in his forties, looks at Nelson and smiles. Nelson forces himself to smile back. This is the third ex-resident of the children’s home who has offered an unsolicited testimonial to the kindness of Father Hennessey. As Clough put it, half an hour ago, ‘perhaps the buggers have been brainwashed.’
While Nelson and Clough are interviewing former residents of the children’s home, Detective Constable Judy Johnson, another of Nelson’s team, is on her way to interview Sister Immaculata, a nun who used to work at the home and is now in a Southport old people’s home. As Nelson hates Southport and Clough hates nuns, it was considered that this visit needed ‘a woman’s touch’.
‘Mr Davies,’ Nelson leans forward, ‘during your time at the home was there any ill-treatment of inmates… sorry, residents.’
‘No, never,’ Davies answers. Too quickly? wonders Nelson.
‘No corporal punishment?’ asks Clough. ‘Quite common in the seventies.’
‘No,’ says Davies quietly, ‘Father Hennessey believed in kindness.’
‘What about the nuns? The sisters. Could they be strict?’
Davies considers. ‘They could be strict, yes. No physical violence but some of them had sharp tongues. A few were kind. Sister James. Sister Immaculata. But some of the others… they were good women but not kindly women, if you know what I mean.’
‘So what were the punishments for bad behaviour?’ persists Nelson.
Davies smiles. ‘Well, for really bad behaviour you got sent to Father Hennessey but that usually turned out to be more of a treat than anything else. He’d get you to help clear out his cupboards or weed the kitchen garden. Some of my happiest memories of SHCH are of working on that garden.’
Nelson sighs and changes tack. ‘Did you know two children called Black? Martin and Elizabeth Black.’
Davies frowns. He has an anxious, squashed-looking face at the best of times. Now his face is positively pleated in thought. ‘Yes,’ he says at last, ‘they went missing.
It was just after I came to SHCH. Martin was about a year younger than me. He was very clever, I remember.’
‘Do you remember anything about their disappearance?’
‘Well, there was a big to-do at the time. We used to have a free hour at the end of the day and I remember that I’d actually been talking to Martin. There was a craze for collecting football cards and we were filling in our scrapbooks. Elizabeth was there too, playing with some stuffed animal. A dog, I think it was. She took it everywhere with her. After a while she wandered off and Martin went to find her. That was the last I saw of him. Then one of the sisters rang the bell for bedtime and they were nowhere to be seen.’
‘What happened next?’
‘Father Hennessey went out to search. Then he must have called the police. I remember being interviewed, being asked when I last saw Martin and Elizabeth. The police were around for a few weeks, asking everyone questions. I remember Sister Immaculata being angry because they interrupted us when we were saying the rosary. Then everything went back to normal. We still prayed for Martin and Elizabeth but we didn’t really talk about them. We forgot. You know what kids are like.’
‘When the police were at SHCH, do you remember them searching the grounds? Digging?’
‘No,’ says Davies slowly, ‘I don’t remember them digging.’
He looks up suddenly. ‘Is that what all this is about? Have you found a body?’
‘I’m not at liberty to say,’ says Nelson.
‘They’re knocking it down, aren’t they?’ says Davies. ‘I walked past the site the other day.’
‘They’re developing it, yes.’
‘It’s a shame. It was a lovely house. Like a mansion, I always thought.’
‘Yes.’ Nelson looks at Clough. ‘Mr Davies, would you be prepared to come to the site and look around? You might be able to tell us where things were. Which rooms were which, that sort of thing.’
‘Yes,’ says Davies, ‘I’d be happy to.’
He gets up to leave, shaking hands with both policemen. At the door, Clough asks, ‘You say Father Hennessey got you an apprenticeship. What trade was that?’
Kevin Davies smiles, the creases in his face turning upwards. ‘Oh, I thought you knew. I’m an undertaker.’
Judy Johnson is pushing a wheelchair along Southport seafront. The tide is out and the sand stretches into the far distance, bands of gold and white and silver, dotted with tiny figures carrying nets and buckets. As she watches, three racehorses canter into view, their necks arching as they fight their bits, the sand flying up behind them. Judy stops for a second and Sister Immaculata turns and says, ‘Red Rum was trained here. Did you know that?’
‘No.’
‘I had a bet on him in 1976. That was the year he came second. Typical.’
‘Was it each way?’ asks Judy, a bookie’s daughter.
‘No, on the nose. Typical.’
The horses are galloping now, stretching out joyfully across the sand, manes and tails flying. The jockeys hover over their necks, seemingly balanced in mid-air. Judy had wanted to be a jockey once. Before she got interested in boys.
The old people’s home turns out to be a convent that looks after aging nuns. The sister in charge suggested that Judy take Sister Immaculata out ‘for a walk’.
‘That way she’ll get fresh air and you can have some privacy.’ A mixture of kindness and absolute authority that Judy remembers from her own (convent) schooldays.
Judy stops by a bench, puts the brakes on the wheelchair and goes to sit beside the elderly nun. She knows from the police records that Sister Immaculata (real name: Orla McKinley) is seventy-five but the veil covering her hair and her high-necked habit serve to mask the most obvious signs of age. Her face is curiously unlined, the blue eyes still sharp. Only the hand, pointing now at Southport Pier, betrays its owner’s age. It’s a mummy’s hand, skeletal and misshapen.
‘Sister Immaculata,’ begins Judy, ‘you worked at the Sacred Heart Children’s Home from 1960 to 1980.’
‘It wasn’t work, it was a vocation,’ says the nun sharply.
‘I’m sorry. But you were resident at the home?’
‘Yes.’
‘What sort of a place was it?’
Sister Immaculata is silent, looking out over the miles of pale sand. But Judy notes that her hands are shaking slightly. Age? Infirmity? Or fear?
‘It was a beautiful house. Lovely grounds. The sort of place where you can’t imagine bad things happening.’
Judy holds her breath. She mustn’t mess this up. The boss expects her to get results. That’s why she has been sent instead of Clough, who’d probably have accused the nun of satanic abuse by now and be on his way for an early lunch.
‘What sort of bad things?’ she asks gently.
The nun looks at her sharply, eyes narrowed.
‘Two children vanished. Isn’t that bad enough for you?’
‘Martin and Elizabeth Black?’
‘Yes. They disappeared. Vanished. Into thin air.’
Judy shivers. It sounds a little like a fairy tale and she has always found these particularly terrifying. Two children go into the woods and bang! they are eaten by a wolf or enticed into a gingerbread house or given a poisoned apple by a close female relation. Vanished. Into thin air.
She struggles to make her voice sound businesslike. ‘How well did you know Martin and Elizabeth?’
Sister Immaculata seems to have recovered her poise. ‘I taught Martin,’ she says, ‘didn’t have much to do with the younger children. That was Sister James, God rest her soul. But I remember Martin. Father Hennessey thought the world of him but he was always trouble, in my opinion.’
‘In what way?’
‘He was clever. Very interested in history. Gladiators, dinosaurs, that sort of thing. Science too. He was always trying some far-fetched experiment. Father Hennessey encouraged him, even made a laboratory for him in the basement. Gave him books to read. But he was the sort of boy who used his intelligence to make trouble. Always asking questions in class. Sacrilegious questions about the Holy Ghost and the Blessed Virgin.’ She nods her head in pious reflex.
‘What did Father Hennessey think about that?’
‘He made excuses for him. The children had a tragic start in life. Their mother died. The only other relative was a drunken father in Ireland. Martin was always talking about his father, making him out to be some sort of hero. That’s why, when they disappeared, we thought they might have gone to Ireland.’
‘Did it come out of the blue, their disappearance?’
‘Well, we thought Martin might have been plotting something. He’d been stealing food for weeks. Father Hennessey knew but he didn’t want to confront the boy, not until he knew what was in his mind. I think he regretted that later.’
‘What did you think?’ In Judy’s experience, everyone likes to be asked their opinion and it seems nuns are no exception to this rule.
‘I thought he needed a good hiding. But Father Hennessey wasn’t having any of that. No physical punishment, that was the rule. Not even a clip round the ear for cheekiness. Not like it was when I was at school.’ She broods for a minute, lower lip stuck out.
‘I told Father Hennessey that Martin Black was trouble but he wouldn’t have it. Just said the boy needed love and attention. Love and attention! Look where that got him. He ran off, taking his poor innocent sister with him. Probably got themselves killed.’
‘Is that what you think happened?’ asks Judy.
Sister Immaculata is silent for a moment and Judy sees now that she has a rosary in her hands. She is twisting the beads between her arthritic fingers. ‘Yes, I think that’s what happened. The world is a dangerous place for children.’
‘What did Father Hennessey think?’
Sister Immaculata looks her full in the face, the blue eyes slightly amused. ‘Haven’t you worked it out yet, girl? Father Hennessey is a saint. And saints cause a lot of trouble for the rest of us.’
&nbs
p; CHAPTER 10
Ruth is excavating the bones. The skeleton has been completely exposed, has been drawn and photographed from all angles. Now, it is Ruth’s job to remove the bones themselves so that they can go to the post-mortem. She moves calmly, placing each bone in a labelled bag and then checking it against what she calls her ‘skeleton sheet’, recording the measurement and appearance of each fragment. Respect and care, that’s what she tells her pupils. Human bones, however old, should be treated with all the respect that you would give to a body. Excavation should take place over one day so that no fragments are lost or stolen. Every bone should be saved, recorded and preserved. Ruth has worked on sites, like the war graves in Bosnia, where many skeletons are mixed together. Then, the process of trying to separate and record is an arduous one. But this is just one skeleton, one little body. Ruth handles the bones with tenderness, reverence even.
Irish Ted has already bagged the bones of the cat. She will take them to the lab on her way home. Neither cat nor human skull has been found.
‘Good day.’ The voice is so close that Ruth jumps. She looks up and sees a good-looking man of about her age, immaculately dressed in a cotton shirt and linen trousers. With him is an older man in a panama hat. Ruth straightens up, shielding her eyes with her hand.
The younger man squats down as if he is about to jump into the trench. Ruth is horrified. Like most archaeologists, she likes to keep her trench immaculate. Standing in someone’s trench is like walking uninvited into their house.
‘Stop!’ she says sharply.
The man looks at her quizzically.
‘You can’t come into the trench,’ says Ruth, struggling to keep her voice polite, ‘you’ll contaminate it.’
The Janus Stone Page 6