The Janus Stone

by Elly Griffiths

  ‘Maybe I do,’ the priest had replied.

  ‘But priests don’t believe in ghosts.’

  ‘Sure we do,’ Hennessey had smiled. ‘What about the Holy Ghost? The most important one of the trilogy as far as I’m concerned.’

  All rubbish as far as Ruth is concerned but, driving back along the misty Saltmarsh road, she kept having a ridiculous compulsion to look in her mirror to check that no one was sitting on the back seat. Even now, as she cooks supper for herself and Tanya, she puts on the radio to stop herself wondering if she can hear breathing outside.

  Ruth doesn’t cook much (although she loves reading cookery books, preferably with pictures of Tuscan olive groves) and she slightly resents cooking for Tanya. It had been all right with Judy but preparing a meal for this stranger sitting on the sofa picking cat’s fur off her black trousers, this is different and slightly stressful. Nevertheless Ruth cooks pasta and sauce and mixes a salad. She and Tanya chat in a desultory manner as they eat. Ruth learns that Tanya is twenty five and has been in the police force four years, she is a graduate (sports science) and she thinks keeping fit is a moral imperative. Ruth listens to this in silence, helping herself to an extra piece of garlic bread. Tanya thinks Norfolk is ‘very nice’, her colleagues are ‘very nice’ and Nelson is also ‘very nice’.

  ‘Don’t you find him a bit of a bully?’

  ‘No. He’s been very nice to me.’

  He’s been nice to me too, thinks Ruth, and look where that got me. She looks out of the window and thinks of Nelson and that night, four months ago, when he turned up unexpectedly at her front door. The sun is setting over the marshes and the birds wheel into the air, shifting black clouds against the deep blue sky.

  ‘Beautiful view,’ says Tanya politely.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ says Ruth. She thinks of the Saltmarsh and its secrets: the hidden causeway, the henge, the bodies buried where the land meets the sea. Last year she had nearly died on the marshes. She had thought that the danger was over and that she could live quietly for a while. But somehow danger seems to have found her again.

  Tanya eats a tiny amount of pasta, pausing between each mouthful. Ruth has finished her second helping before Tanya has eaten her first. They drink water (‘I’m on duty’) and Tanya reacts to the offer of pudding as if Ruth had tried to sell her drugs. Ruth eats a slice of chocolate cake and wonders what the hell they are going to talk about all evening. Perhaps they can just watch TV.

  She is about to suggest this when, without warning, the lights go out. Tanya jumps up, alert at once.

  ‘It’s OK,’ says Ruth, ‘it’s only the fuse. It does that occasionally. The box is out the back.’

  The fuse box is in a small outhouse in the back garden. Ruth’s neighbours, the weekenders, have converted their outhouse into another bathroom but Ruth’s just contains rusty gardening equipment, a defunct exercise bicycle and the remains of a rotary washing line.

  ‘I’ll go,’ says Tanya.

  ‘Don’t be silly. It’s right by the back door. Anyway, you’d never find the box. There’s no light in the shed.’

  Ruth puts on her shoes and opens the kitchen door. It is dark outside and a fresh, salty wind is blowing. She steps into the garden, feeling for the side of the shed with one hand. She can feel the flint wall, the rotting wood of the door. She reaches out to touch the handle.

  And encounters living flesh.

  CHAPTER 27

  Ruth screams. She is aware of a smell, lemon and sandal-wood, and then the world goes black. She is fighting for breath; she can’t see or feel anything. She falls to the ground, scraping her knee on stone.

  ‘Ruth!’ Tanya’s voice, muffled but close.

  Something is pulled from over Ruth’s head and she can see again. The night sky looks extraordinarily bright after the previous total blackness. Ruth is kneeling on the floor by the shed and Tanya is standing beside her, holding a heavy black cloth.

  ‘What happened?’ Tanya sounds very shaken. Whether it is concern for Ruth or fear of what Nelson would say if anything happened to her, Ruth doesn’t know.

  ‘I came out. I was feeling for the wall and I felt… a person. Someone was standing there, right by the wall. I touched them. Their face, I think. I heard them breathing. Then it all went black.’

  ‘They threw this over you.’ Tanya indicated the black cloth. ‘It’s weighted at the bottom,’ she says.

  ‘That’s why I couldn’t get it off.’ Ruth struggles to her feet. Now that the fear has subsided, she feels rather foolish. There is something infinitely ridiculous about being wrapped in a cloth, like a budgie in a cage.

  Tanya pushes open the shed door. ‘Is there anyone there?’ she calls, her voice admirably steady. No answer but Flint nearly gives them both a heart attack by jumping heavily from the roof, landing with a thump on the grass.

  ‘Let’s get you inside,’ says Tanya. ‘I’ll come back out here with a torch.’

  But Ruth doesn’t want to stay indoors on her own, so she follows Tanya back out into the garden. Tanya flashes her torch around the tiny shed. Its beam illuminates the collection of rusty iron and plastic, the fuse box on the wall, the festoons of cobwebs – but nothing else. She gestures towards the fuse box, all the switches have been pushed down.

  ‘Someone did that deliberately,’ she says, ‘and look at the doorway. No cobwebs there.’

  She shines her torch downwards and there, on the dusty earth floor, between a shovel and the plastic strings of the washing line, is a single footprint.

  ‘Bingo,’ says Tanya.

  Avoiding the print, Tanya switches the power back on and, immediately, light from the house streams into the garden. She spends a few more minutes examining the footprint before saying, ‘OK. Let’s go in. I’ve got to call the boss.’

  While Tanya rings Nelson, Ruth feeds Flint who has been meowing loudly for the last five minutes. She can just hear muttered snatches of conversation. ‘No… just now… no sign of… perpetrator escaped… thorough search… print… seems a bit shaken… no… yes, sir.’

  ‘He’s on his way,’ says Tanya as Ruth comes into the sitting room. She sounds nervous. Ruth thinks it must be extremely stressful to work for Nelson. And she could never imagine calling another adult ‘sir’.

  Nelson arrives in ten minutes, bringing with him a colleague from forensics. By this time, Tanya and Ruth are sitting in front of the television mindlessly watching a programme called Your top fifty advertising icons from the 70s. Ruth’s knee is hurting and she is longing to be in bed. Tanya sits on the edge of the sofa, fiddling with her mobile.

  ‘Nice to see someone’s got time to watch telly,’ is Nelson’s opening gambit.

  ‘Yes, we’re just having a nice quiet evening,’ Ruth retorts. She doesn’t feel ready for Nelson’s brusque irony. Tanya, though, blushes.

  ‘I thought it would calm Ruth down,’ she says, ‘she’s a bit upset.’

  ‘I’m not the slightest bit upset,’ snaps Ruth.

  Nelson strides out into the garden, followed by Tanya and the forensics man. Ruth stays inside. She knows she should be bustling about making tea, being terribly grateful for all this police protection but instead she feels cross and tired and, despite what she said to Tanya, extremely scared. It is one thing to be afraid of the creature in the night, another actually to touch its face, to feel its breath. The danger has come closer, almost to Ruth’s very door and, yes, she is very upset indeed.

  Ruth sits on the sofa with Flint on her lap watching as the Smash aliens fill the TV screen. She has turned the sound off but she can hear their tinny voices in her head, reminding her of cosy evenings spent watching TV with her parents: Tomorrow’s World, Man About the House, Upstairs Downstairs. No wonder they put all these nostalgia programmes on the TV, just the thing for saddoes like her. Funny, at the time, she didn’t realise that she was living through the golden age of telly; you watched what was on, that was all. There were just the three channels for most of her childho
od, no remote control, switching channels meant actually getting up from your seat. They didn’t call it ‘switching’, she remembers, they called it ‘turning over’. ‘Shall we turn over, Daddy?’ her mother would ask when Top of the Pops came on. How Ruth had longed to watch Top of the Pops with all those sinful transvestites gyrating to the devil’s music. Turning over implied only two choices – BBC1 or 2. Ruth’s parents had thought that ITV was somehow common – maybe that’s why they had watched I, Claudius, despite it being so disgusting. Full of sex and violence it may have been, but it was on BBC2 and so somehow safe.

  Lying on the table is the black cloth which, only an hour ago, was bundled over her head. Ruth leans closer to examine it, careful not to touch. It is heavy black material, almost oily-looking, and, as Tanya said, it is weighted along the hem, as if it has been specially made to hang down over something.

  ‘Looks like something you’d put over a statue,’ says a voice behind her. Nelson has come back in, bringing with him cool air and an almost palpable sense of action, of getting things done. Despite herself, Ruth feels a lot safer when he is in the house.

  ‘What do you mean, over a statue?’ she asks.

  ‘You know,’ says Nelson, slightly defensively, ‘like when they cover the statues in church on Good Friday.’

  Ruth thinks of Father Hennessey. What about the Holy Ghost? The most important one of the trilogy as far as I’m concerned. ‘I’m happy to say I’ve never been in church on Good Friday,’ she says. Not one with statues anyway. Her parents think statues are sinful, evidence of evil Catholic idolatry. Ruth is no fan of Catholicism but she remembers churches in Italy and Spain, rich with incense and mystery, statues and paintings illuminated by hundreds of glowing candles. Idolatry maybe, but a lot more interesting than the empty brick building, rather like a public lavatory, where her parents get to grips with being Born Again.

  ‘Or a plinth,’ says Tanya, appearing at Nelson’s side, notebook at the ready.

  ‘Plinth?’ Nelson sounds impatient.

  ‘It’s like the cloth they use to cover the plinths at the museum,’ says Tanya.

  30th June Day of Aestas

  Two black crows in the garden. My lucky number in the date. An even number of pips in my breakfast grapefruit. When I sacrificed (a blackbird) the head came off sweetly, easily, and the blood ran swiftly into the earth, forming the letter S. S for Sacrifice. A very good omen.

  CHAPTER 28

  At nine o’clock sharp, full of a Full English Breakfast, Judy Johnson presents herself at the convent. She is told that Sister Immaculata is feeling slightly better and that she can see Judy in fifteen minutes ‘when we’ve tidied her up a bit’. Dreading to think what this entails, Judy sits down to wait in the reception area, beside a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary, eyes rolling ecstatically up to heaven.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Johnson.’ It is the Sister, all starched veil and professional kindness.

  ‘Detective Constable Johnson,’ says Judy.

  ‘I beg your pardon.’ Titles are important, thinks Judy. The Sister would lose all her authority if addressed as Miss Whatever, would become just another middle-aged woman in a funny outfit. But as Sister Mary of the Sacred Heart she has power, albeit of a rather specialised kind.

  ‘Sister?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wonder… could you tell me… what is wrong with Sister Immaculata?’

  ‘Wrong?’ The Sister raises her eyebrows. ‘She has cancer, Detective Constable Johnson. Inoperable. She has months, maybe weeks, to live.’

  This time, Judy interviews Sister Immaculata in a conservatory overlooking a windswept rock garden. The nun is perceptibly weaker, her breath rattling in her chest, her hands shaking. Only her eyes remain alert – they regard Judy with suspicion, even, perhaps, fear.

  ‘Detective Constable Judy Johnson,’ Judy introduces herself. ‘Do you remember me?’

  ‘Of course I do. I’m not daft, you know.’ Judy is rather relieved to hear the aggression in the old woman’s voice. It will make her task easier.

  ‘Sister Immaculata, your real name is Orla McKinley. Is that right?’

  A pause. ‘Depends what you mean by “real”.’

  ‘Your baptismal name.’

  ‘Yes. What of it?’

  ‘In 1951 you were living with the Spens family on Woolmarket Street.’

  Another, longer pause. Sister Immaculata twists the ever-present rosary tightly around her hand. In the rock garden two seagulls fight over a crust of bread.

  ‘I was working there as a nanny,’ Sister Immaculata says at last.

  ‘Annabelle Spens’ nanny?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Annabelle died in 1952, didn’t she?’

  Sister Immaculata looks at her but says nothing. The rosary beads are still.

  ‘Did you stay on after Annabelle died?’

  ‘Yes. They were kind. They let me stay.’

  ‘Did you look after Roderick?’

  ‘Roderick was fourteen. Hardly a child.’

  ‘Sister Immaculata…’ Judy leans forward. She knows everything depends on getting this old, dying woman to speak to her. She puts all her persuasive powers into her next words, even offering up a prayer for good measure. Please God, let her tell me the truth. ‘Sister Immaculata, we found a little girl’s body buried under the front door. I need you to tell me, is there any way that the body could be Annabelle’s? Please. It’s very important.’

  At first she thinks that she has failed. Sister Immaculata says nothing and the rosary beads start to move between her fingers. But then, with a sound halfway between a sigh and a sob, the words start to pour out.

  ‘It was wrong. It was evil. I knew that but I loved him, you see. Strange what a poor excuse that sounds, but I loved him. At the time, that was everything. I covered up for him. I knew it was a sin. A black sin. I’ve tried to atone but the sin catches you up in the end.’

  ‘Sister,’ Judy presses her hand, ‘what sin? What did you cover up?’

  Sister Immaculata looks at her and now her eyes are awash with tears. ‘He killed her,’ she says, ‘and I covered up for him.’

  Nelson is not having a good day. His computer has gone Trappist again, Clough has disappeared for a late breakfast or early lunch and Tanya is nowhere to be seen. He wishes Judy were here. She has one outstandingly good quality as a police officer – she is always where you want her to be. Except now, of course, when she’s in bloody Southport. As a child, Nelson once spent a holiday in Southport. Long, wet walks along the seafront, a B and B where you got one slice of toast for breakfast and weren’t allowed to touch any of the thousands of knick-knacks grinning evilly from the shelves. Never again.

  He’s also tired. He didn’t leave Ruth’s until past midnight. She’d seemed all right, shaken obviously but still feisty. It’s one of the things he really likes about Ruth. She’s tough. Some people would have been hysterical last night because, let’s face it, someone had come right up to her house, intending to kidnap her, assault her or worse. But Ruth had been her usual, defiant self. She’d been quite acerbic when Tanya had (tactlessly) suggested that she was upset. Tanya is never in a million years going to understand someone like Ruth Galloway. He’s not sure he understands her either but he does admire her. Admire her? queries a weaselly voice in his head. Is that all? Nelson stamps firmly on any thoughts about his feelings for Ruth. He’s already had to put up with the sight of Michelle sorting out piles of Rebecca’s old baby things to give to Ruth. He doesn’t need any more complications, thank you very much.

  ‘Sir?’

  Tanya’s head appears around his office door. He tries to discourage the rest of her from joining it.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ve found Annabelle Spens’ dental records.’

  This is different. His tiredness vanishes and rearranges his face into something more welcoming.

  ‘Good work, Tanya. Show me.’

  Praise makes Tanya expansive. ‘We
ll, it was really you saying about there being some fancy dental work done. I thought, maybe they didn’t get it done locally. So I contacted the London School of Dentistry. They’ve been around since 1911, used to be at the London Hospital but it’s now part of St Bartholomew’s. Anyway, they had her records. They faxed them over a few minutes ago.’

  She pauses for praise but Nelson just holds out his hand for the records. He scans the pages, frowning, then looks up.

  ‘It’s not her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you look at the records?’

  ‘No… I just brought them straight to you.’

  ‘Well, you remember our skull has a filling. Unusual in such a young child. According to this, Annabelle Spens didn’t have a filling in her head.’

  Ruth is on her way to meet Cathbad. He rang yesterday and suggested meeting at the Roman site and having lunch at the Phoenix. Now, Ruth considers that Cathbad will provide the perfect antidote to the darkness of the last few days. Cathbad may talk about being open to the ‘dark side’ but there is, in fact, something curiously comforting about him. Also Max has told her that they have unearthed a carving which could be a ‘Janus Stone’, a depiction of the old two-faced God himself. She looks forward to introducing Cathbad to Janus.

  Ruth drives fast, listening to one of her more cheerful Bruce Springsteen tapes. None of that ‘Badlands’ stuff, the highway travelling to nowhere, the dead-end towns with no jobs ‘on account of the economy’. This is the ‘Dancing in the Dark’ years, unsubtle guitar riffs and souring sax solos. Ruth is tired (she didn’t get to bed until one and then hardly slept) but she is happy that the thought of a genuine Roman find can lift her spirits and help her forget that someone is trying to kill her.

  Well, not forget exactly, she looks about her as she gets out of the car and she jumps when a skylark rises vertically out of the undergrowth, its song spiralling into the sky. She also keeps one hand on her mobile phone. Nelson is on speed dial – the first sign of anything lurking in the bushes and she’ll be onto him. But, in the daylight, it’s hard to believe in murdered children, sacrificial offerings or the cult of the witch-goddess.