The Dark Angel

by Elly Griffiths

  Eventually, Kate lets her go and snuggles down with her cuddly chimpanzee and a story tape. Ruth pours herself a glass of red so quickly that it spills on the floor, then goes into the sitting room and presses ‘play messages’.

  ‘Hello, Ruth. This is Angelo Morelli. Do you remember me? So long since I’ve seen you and you’ve become famous. I have a proposition for you. Call me.’ And he leaves a number. Ruth stays in the dark, drinking her wine and thinking about Italy.

  *

  Tim arrives promptly at eleven the next day. Ruth is glad that she asked him to come to the cottage: it’s a beautiful morning, the tide is out and the salt marsh is a magical place of purple sea lavender interspersed with glittering streams and the occasional limpid, blue pool. Ruth and Tim sit on the bench in the front garden, watching Kate construct a ‘summer house’ for Flint out of old Amazon boxes.

  ‘He’s upwardly mobile,’ says Tim, ‘now that he’s got a second home. It’ll be surfing holidays in Cornwall next.’

  ‘Our next-door neighbours are weekenders,’ says Ruth. ‘This is their summer house. I think that’s where Kate got it from – they babysit sometimes. And I don’t think Flint has any intention of moving into his new home.’

  Flint is watching Kate from his vantage point on the roof, and when she tries to tempt him down he simply moves further up.

  ‘He’s stuck, Mum,’ says Kate.

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ says Ruth. ‘Cats never get stuck.’

  ‘She’s growing up fast,’ says Tim.

  ‘Yes. It doesn’t seem possible that she’ll be going into year two in September.’

  They are silent for a few minutes, drinking their coffee. It all seems very relaxed and friendly – the sunshine, the child playing at their feet – but Ruth feels tense and unsettled. She feels sure that Tim hasn’t come round to discuss Kate’s growth spurt. And, eventually, Tim speaks, looking out towards the marshes and avoiding eye contact.

  ‘Have you heard that Michelle’s pregnant?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Ruth.

  ‘The thing is,’ says Tim, and falls silent again.

  Ruth bears it as long as she can, then prompts, ‘The thing is?’

  ‘The thing is, Ruth,’ says Tim, speaking in a rush now, ‘there’s a chance that the baby could be mine. I don’t know who else to tell. I thought you might understand because . . .’

  There’s another silence. Ruth takes a gulp of coffee but her mouth remains dry.

  ‘Because Michelle told you about Nelson and me,’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ says Tim. ‘I’m sorry, Ruth, but I feel like I’m going mad here. There’s no one I can talk to about this.’

  ‘Have you talked to Michelle?’

  ‘Yes. But she says that she wants to give their marriage another go. Things haven’t been good since Kate . . . well, since Kate was born, and she says this is their last chance.’

  Ruth has a flashback to the days when they first found the henge on the beach. When the authorities had wanted to remove the timbers, local druids (led by Cathbad) had clung desperately to the wooden posts as the sea surged around them. Michelle is clinging just as desperately to her marriage. Ruth respects her for it.

  ‘I thought your affair with Michelle was over,’ she says.

  ‘It was,’ says Tim. ‘It was over before it began, really. I moved away so that we wouldn’t be tempted any more. Then, I don’t know, we got in contact again. Just emails and WhatsApp messages at first. But then, in May, I came to Norwich and we met at a hotel and . . .’

  What had Ruth been doing in May? Teaching at the university, trying to juggle work and motherhood, trying not to think about Nelson. Then, in June, she had been drawn into one of Nelson’s cases as he hunted a killer in the tunnels below Norwich. In June, Ruth’s mother had died. And, in June, Ruth and Nelson had rekindled their affair, just once, in the bedroom a few metres from where she and Tim are sitting.

  When she speaks, it sounds as if her voice is coming from a long way away. ‘And you think the baby might be yours?’

  ‘Well, the dates add up but, then again, she was sleeping with Nelson too. She never made any secret about that.’

  Ruth has, over the years, tried to convince herself that Nelson and Michelle don’t have sex any more. But, deep down, she has always known that this isn’t true. Something keeps that marriage together, something besides being the parents of grown-up children, because, apart from that, they seem to have little in common. She rather fears that this something is intense physical attraction.

  ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘What can I do except wait? After all, I’ll know pretty quickly if the baby is mine.’

  Ruth looks at Tim, who often used to describe himself as the only black policeman in Norfolk. While this isn’t quite true, there’s no doubt that Tim’s ethnicity will make a DNA test unnecessary. What must Michelle be thinking now? Ruth remembers her looking rather pale and wan when she saw her in July, but she’d put it down to morning sickness. What must it feel like to have this uncertainty hanging over her for nine months? And Nelson? Does he suspect? He’s suspicious by nature – he’s a policeman, after all – and it is unlikely that his thoughts haven’t strayed towards Tim. Then again, Nelson has a pretty strong belief in his own potency. He has fathered three children and has probably never doubted the paternity of this fourth baby.

  ‘I’ve always wanted children,’ Tim is saying. ‘People talk about women feeling broody but never about men.’

  Time to bring the conversation to an end if Tim’s going to start one of those ‘men have feelings too’ speeches. Ruth stands up. ‘Sorry, Tim, but I have to get going soon. We’re meeting some friends for lunch.’

  Kate looks up from her boxes. ‘Are we?’ she says in surprise. ‘Can we go to Pizza Express?’

  *

  Nelson has never really got the hang of Sundays. When he was a child, it was a day dominated by church. His mother, Maureen, was (and is) a devout Catholic, and Nelson passed through all the religious staging posts – first holy communion, altar boy, confirmation – without ever really asking himself whether he believed in the holy Catholic church, the forgiveness of sins, the communion of the saints and life everlasting amen. He doesn’t go to Mass now but he thinks that he probably does believe in God, if only because it would be just like Maureen to be right all along. But Sunday remains a day when you feel that you should be doing something special, something else. In Nelson’s twenties and thirties, Sunday football had filled the gap, but he thinks he’s too old now and doesn’t want to end up with dodgy knees like all his footballing contemporaries. Michelle and the girls have always seen the day as a chance to worship their own god, that of conspicuous consumption, but Nelson hates shopping and visits to places like garden centres bore him rigid. Michelle always makes time to cook the traditional Sunday roast, although usually for supper rather than lunch. Nelson usually ends up walking the dog, doing some vaguely penitential work in the garden, eating a huge meal and falling asleep in front of the TV. He supposes that that’s honouring the Sabbath, in its way.

  Today, Michelle says she feels tired after the wedding and wants to stay in bed. Not that they had stayed late at the reception. Nelson had left as soon as he decently could, but not before he’d seen Ruth and Katie making their way out of the marquee, Katie hanging back but Ruth looking as if it was only politeness that stopped her from running. He’d wanted to go after them, to ask if they were all right, but he knew that he couldn’t. He’d been forced to stay for another hour, watching his junior officers make fools of themselves on the dance floor. He’d asked Michelle if she wanted to dance but she’d said no. This pregnancy is more draining than the others – not surprising, as she’s twenty years older. Laura, their eldest daughter, is twenty-four. She studied marine biology at Plymouth (a mystery to Nelson) and then seemed to have an extended holiday, working as a travel rep in Ibiza. To her parents’ relief, Laura has now decided to train as a teacher. She is liv
ing at home before starting a PGCE at the University of East Anglia in September. Rebecca is twenty-two. She did media studies at the University of Brighton and still lives there. Katie is six and, although Michelle knows that she is his daughter, Laura and Rebecca do not. For this reason, although Michelle very generously allows him to have contact with Katie, she cannot really be part of the family. Nelson knows that this state of affairs can’t continue for ever.

  Nelson decides to take Bruno out for a long walk. The dog, a young German Shepherd, needs a lot of exercise and neither Laura nor Michelle are very keen on this aspect of dog ownership. But Nelson enjoys it. He thinks of Bruno as his dog and he can tell that the animal feels the same way. ‘German Shepherds are one man dogs,’ the famous police-dog handler Jan Adams once told him, ‘one person dogs anyway.’ It’s nice to know that he’s popular with someone anyway.

  He drives to Sandringham, the queen’s country house, which is set in miles of woodland and heath, open to everyone. Nelson doesn’t have strong views about the monarchy: he’s glad they’re there, he supposes (he had been quite shocked to find that Ruth was an anti-monarchist), but he can’t be bothered with all the stuff in the papers about the little princes and princesses and what some duchess was wearing when she opened a factory. But he does like walking on the estate. It’s not as lonely as the sea or the salt marsh – at least this is a place where people live, albeit very grand people who only helicopter in once or twice a year. There are signs of human habitation – notices, fences and so on – but, if you come early enough, you can have the place to yourself. People are always going on about the bluebells and rhododendrons but, to Nelson, flowers are just flowers. It’s the peace he likes and the chance to think, the only sounds his feet on the forest path and Bruno scuffling madly in the undergrowth.

  The trouble is, he doesn’t want to think today. Because, if he starts thinking, he will go back to the expression that he saw on Tim’s face yesterday. He knows that Tim was in love with Michelle and that they had an affair which included everything except sex. Michelle told him this and he believed her. But yesterday there was just something in the look on Tim’s face, something both troubled and slightly smug, that is proving impossible to forget, no matter how many miles he walks. Could Michelle and Tim have consummated their relationship? Could the baby be Tim’s? Michelle has been behaving very oddly since the announcement distant and short-tempered, very unlike the serene nesting of her earlier pregnancies. Is this just because she’s older now and this baby is such a shock? He could ask her straight out, he supposes, but that might lead them onto dangerous ground. Nelson has an illegitimate child and Michelle has, ostensibly, forgiven him. Nelson owes Michelle, that much is certain. But if Michelle is in love with Tim, does that leave Nelson free to be with Ruth? Is this what he wants? Is this what she wants?

  That’s the trouble with questions, he thinks, throwing a stick for Bruno and watching him jump joyfully into the air to catch it. Questions need answers and he hasn’t got any. He strides through the queen’s trees, trying not to think.

  *

  Ruth ends up taking Kate to Pizza Express in King’s Lynn after all. Kate enjoys herself hugely and doesn’t ask when the mythical friends are turning up. Afterwards, they walk by the quay and eat ice creams. Although it’s still August, there’s almost an autumnal feeling in the air, thinks Ruth. The sun is warm, but when they walked through the park earlier there were leaves on the ground, and the shops are full of cheerful ‘Back to School’ posters. Ruth always slightly dreads giving Kate back to the alien world of school, but there is no doubt that Kate is looking forward to it. She has already drawn up a shortlist of people she wants to sit next to her.

  ‘Ruth!’ Someone is walking towards her. Someone effortlessly elegant in a stripy top and narrow blue trousers, burnished hair gleaming. Someone pulling a disgruntled-looking toddler by the hand.

  ‘Shona! What are you doing here?’

  Shona sits on the bench next to her, and Louis, her four-year-old, makes a beeline for Kate, who ignores him. ‘I’m escaping from Phil for a bit,’ says Shona. ‘He’s working on spreadsheets for the new term.’

  Phil is Ruth’s boss at the university, where she’s a lecturer. She has no doubt that on the spreadsheets she will be taking all her tutorials at 8 a.m.

  ‘I was just thinking that summer is nearly over.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ says Shona. ‘It’s mid-August. It was the Feast of the Assumption yesterday.’

  Shona, like Nelson, was brought up a Catholic and always remembers the saints’ days. Her interest is more cultural than religious these days though. Shona teaches English at the University of North Norfolk and specialises in T. S. Eliot.

  ‘It was Clough’s wedding too.’

  ‘So it was! How did it go? I bet Cassandra looked lovely.’

  Shona is always generous about other women’s looks, perhaps because she is so beautiful herself.

  ‘She did,’ says Ruth. ‘It was OK, as weddings go.’

  ‘You sound a bit down.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ says Ruth. ‘The wedding was a bit difficult, you know . . .’

  She doesn’t have to say more. Shona knows about Nelson and Ruth and, although fascinated by the situation, usually manages not to talk about it.

  ‘You need a holiday,’ she says now.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ says Ruth. ‘Do you remember when we went to Florence and Siena? It’s been over ten years since I went abroad.’

  ‘I’d love to go again,’ says Shona. ‘Not with Phil though. He keeps moaning about the exchange rate. Glad I didn’t know him when Italy had the lira and everything was in millions.’

  *

  Ruth and Kate are just settling down to watch a Disney film when the phone rings. Somehow she’s not surprised when a voice says, ‘Hello, Ruth. It’s Angelo.’

  ‘Angelo. Hi.’

  ‘Long time no see. That’s what they say in England, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Ruth, thinking that Angelo’s English is as good as ever, though still with that gorgeously lilting accent.

  ‘How are you, Ruth? I see you’re still working at North Norfolk.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Ruth, wishing that this was North Norfolk College, Cambridge. Still, it’s flattering that Angelo has looked her up. ‘What about you?’ she says. ‘Still in Rome?’

  ‘Yes, I’m head of department now. And . . .’ He gives a self-deprecating laugh. ‘I have my own TV show.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, it’s called I Segreti del Passato. It’s about archaeology. These programmes are very popular in Italy.’

  ‘It’s the same here. There’s a programme called Time Team that always seems to be on television.’

  ‘And you, Ruth. You’ve been on television. You’re a media star.’

  Ruth has been on television twice. Once in a series called Women Who Kill and once on a programme about American airbases in Norfolk. She doesn’t look back on either experience with great fondness, not least because the camera seemed to add about two stone. She wonders where Angelo got this information. She hopes there aren’t any clips on YouTube.

  ‘And I’ve read your book,’ says Angelo, ‘about the excavations in Lancashire.’ He seems to give this last word ten syllables.

  This is better. She’s proud of the book.

  ‘The thing is, Ruth,’ says Angelo, ‘I’m digging in the Liri Valley, not far from Rome, and we’ve found some bones. We think they’re Roman but we’ve found some . . . what is the word? Anomalies.’

  ‘What sort of anomalies?’

  There’s a pause. ‘The thing is,’ says Angelo again, ‘I’d like you to see them for yourself.’

  ‘You could send me some photographs,’ says Ruth.

  ‘Is there any chance you could come to Italy?’ says Angelo. ‘Just for a few days? I’ve got an apartment you can use. It’s in a remote hilltop village, a really beautiful part of the country. You could have a holiday there.’ />
  Chapter 3

  ‘Italy?’ says Ruth’s father, Arthur, standing among the graves as if turned to stone. ‘Why would you want to go to Italy?’

  It’s a genuine question and Ruth considers and rejects a variety of answers. Because Italy is beautiful, because it has a wealth of history and culture, because I haven’t had a foreign holiday in ten years, because my married lover’s wife is expecting a baby. Instead she says, ‘It’s a real opportunity for me, professionally. This archaeologist, Angelo Morelli, is very well known. He presents a TV programme in Italy. And he wants my advice on some bones he has discovered. I met him years ago at a conference and he’s followed my career. He’s read my book.’

  This mollifies her father, as she had known it would. Though both her parents officially took the position that being a wife and mother was the highest role to which a woman could aspire, they were both very proud of her career. When Ruth had her first book published, her mother had actually told her she was proud, an almost unprecedented occurrence. Ruth knows that her father wouldn’t understand going to Italy for pleasure, but he can accept it as a work trip. And that’s what it is, she tells herself. In a way.

  ‘What would your mother say?’ says Arthur, as if he would really like to know. As he speaks, he turns to the tombstone, white and stark among the older graves, like a false tooth in a mouth full of decaying molars.

  Jean Galloway

  Beloved wife and mother

  At rest with the angels

  1938–2015

  There is a space underneath for Arthur’s name. He’d explained this quite matter-of-factly to Ruth as they walked from his south London house to Eltham Cemetery.

  ‘I’m going to be buried with her,’ he’d said, ‘so I’ve asked them to leave some space on the stone.’

  Kate, who had been skipping alongside them, said, ‘Will your body go on top of Grandma’s?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Arthur, ‘they’ve left space for my coffin.’