A Room Full Of Bones

by Elly Griffiths

  Ruth is surprised at how shaken she feels. She would never have imagined that Judy and Cathbad could be drawn to each other. Judy is so capable and efficient, her feelings kept well in check. Cathbad… well, Cathbad is a druid, a man of violent passions and opinions. She remembers him being at her house the morning after the snowstorm, but she had been so preoccupied with seeing Kate again that she had failed to notice any erotic undercurrents. She had thought that it was odd that Cathbad was there, and Judy had seemed particularly distant and professional. To think that only a few hours earlier…

  And that’s another thing. Though she doesn’t like to admit it, even to herself, Ruth’s predominant emotion is one of jealousy. She isn’t attracted to Cathbad. She doesn’t want to go to bed with him but she does want to go to bed with somebody. This particular need is not covered by the baby books. Single mothers are meant to be single mothers, not really women any more. A single mother with a boyfriend is something else altogether, a case for social services in fact. And Ruth feels rather aggrieved that Judy can forget her marriage vows while Nelson’s are, apparently, indestructible.

  There are so many things she wants to say. She wants to know what the hell Judy and Cathbad are going to do. Is Judy going to divorce Darren and marry Cathbad? She can’t imagine Cathbad getting married somehow. But none of that’s her business. She settles for asking about the one issue that has become her business. Why was Cathbad ‘helping with enquiries’ today? Why did he think that he might be under arrest?

  ‘Well,’ says Cathbad, settling himself more comfortably in the passenger seat. ‘You know that Lord Smith is dead.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, you didn’t know. Yes, he died in the night.’

  ‘But how? I saw him yesterday, when we opened the coffin, and he seemed in perfect health.’

  ‘They don’t know. I assume there’ll be tests and things.’

  ‘How are you involved?’

  ‘The police are investigating. Judy went to check on the CCTV footage and she saw that I’d visited Slaughter Hill Stables last night.’

  ‘You did?’ This must have been after Cathbad left her house, after the fireworks and the brandy, after Bob offered to drive him as far as Snettisham.

  ‘I went to see Caroline,’ Cathbad is saying.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Smith’s daughter. She’s a friend of mine.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’

  ‘No one asked. Caroline’s interested in archaeology. She’s even been on a few digs. She’s friends with Trace.’

  ‘Did Bob go with you?’

  ‘Bob? No. He dropped me off on the King’s Lynn road. I walked the rest of the way.’

  ‘But why? Surely it was a bit late for a social call.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to her about tomorrow’s conference. Are you still coming?’

  ‘Oh, the Elginist thing? I suppose so. If I can get a babysitter. So, is this Caroline one of the Elginists?’

  ‘She’s definitely interested. I thought she might like to go to the conference.’

  ‘But why go so late?’

  Cathbad smiles. ‘I was following my instincts.’

  They have reached the university. As soon as Ruth parks the car Cathbad jumps out, thanks Ruth, says he’ll see her tomorrow and disappears through the doors of the chemistry block. Ruth realises that she’s not going to get any more answers out of him. But as she gathers up her papers and her bag and heads towards Natural Sciences, her head is swirling with words and images.

  Cathbad and Judy in her bed, the snow falling outside.

  Lord Smith in the attic rooms at the museum, telling her about his great-grandfather’s collection. There’s some wonderful stuff. We’ve got some of it in the museum downstairs: snakeskins, dingo traps, branding irons…

  Janet Meadows telling her about Bishop Augustine. Sometimes in the morning he was black and blue after having tussled with the devil all night.

  The statue with its stone foot on a snake.

  Nelson’s face when he first saw Kate. Standing in the maternity ward with Michelle beside him.

  Fireworks exploding in the night sky.

  Cathbad grinning at her across the table. You should point the bone at him, Bob.

  Bob’s face, so different when he isn’t smiling. He’s dead now. The ancestors are powerful.

  Ted chomping his pizza. Maybe the devil was about to have his revenge.

  The skulls, the sightless eyes.

  The room full of bones.

  CHAPTER 17

  Nelson is in a sauna. It’s not his preferred way of spending the time. Michelle loves all the gym stuff – exercise classes, Jacuzzi, aquarobics, the lot – but he finds it all rather embarrassing. He likes a swim (as a teenager he had a holiday job as a lifeguard) but that’s about it. He hates the recycled air, the recycled music, the little bottles of shampoo that smell like a Thai meal, the fluffy towels, the frothy coffee. He hates the women in their designer sportswear; they make him feel both lustful and disapproving, an uneasy combination. Why haven’t they got jobs to go to, for God’s sake? And the water’s too hot too. At the Derby Baths you used to be blue when you got out of the water, despite being indoors. That was proper swimming in a proper Olympic-sized pool with diving boards that seemed to reach up to the sky. It was salt water, he remembers, made your eyes sting and your skin turn crusty. He’d once challenged a fellow lifeguard to a race over fifty lengths. When they’d got out, their legs had buckled. Like he said, proper swimming.

  But today’s visit is business not pleasure. Nelson has a meeting with Jimmy Olson, his informant. Nelson suspects Jimmy of choosing increasingly bizarre meeting places. Last time it was a cinema, the time before in a seedy arcade. It’s like going on a series of terrible dates. At least today’s venue, in a health club attached to a hotel in Cromer, is relatively upmarket. How had Jimmy, for whom the words low life might have been invented, come up with a place like this?

  ‘Mate of mine’s a member,’ he says, in answer to Nelson’s question.

  Does Olson have mates? Nelson looks at the skinny figure opposite, physique miserably exposed in a pair of skimpy Speedos, and concedes that it must be possible, though it seems unlikely. Olson looks back at him out of eyes so pale blue that they look almost white. He sniffs noisily. Nelson hopes that he doesn’t catch Olson’s cold, these places must be a breeding ground for germs.

  ‘Have you got anything for me?’ he asks.

  ‘I told you,’ says Jimmy. ‘There hasn’t been a dicky bird on the ground.’

  ‘There must be something.’

  A woman looks in through the glass door but decides against entering the sauna. Nelson doesn’t blame her. They must look an odd couple, the thin, red-eyed twenty-something and the tall, greying man in slightly too tight swimming trunks (they only had one size for sale in the lobby; cost a bomb too). They must look strange but they probably do look like a couple. Jesus wept, what a way to spend his birthday.

  ‘There’s a lot of charlie around. It’s good stuff, clean, but no one knows where it’s coming from.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Honest to God.’ Jimmy found God while serving time for dealing. He credits the Almighty for keeping him out of prison for the past three years but he would do better to thank Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson, who has got him off a number of smaller charges in return for information. And now Nelson is impatient; he is sure Olson must know something. He is close to a number of dealers, including a deeply unpleasant character known as the Vicar. Yet here’s the market being flooded by cheap foreign cocaine and no one knows anything about it. Call themselves businessmen.

  Jimmy gets up to put water on the hot coals. The room is filled with steam and Nelson catches a whiff of Jimmy’s body odour over the smell of pine and lemongrass. He starts to feel slightly sick.

  ‘Do you know a character called Neil Topham?’ asks Nelson.

  He can’t see Jimmy very well
but he’s sure that he’s looking shifty.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I ask the questions.’

  ‘I think I may have heard the name. He’s a customer.’

  ‘Of yours?’

  ‘No! I swear to God, Inspector Nelson, I haven’t dealt for years. No, a customer of a friend of mine.’

  ‘Good customer?’

  ‘I think so. Why? What’s he done?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  Jimmy’s mouth opens in a silent O.

  ‘Would your dealer friend have anything to do with that? Has he been hanging round the Smith Museum?’

  Jimmy starts violently then tries to conceal the fact by jumping to his feet.

  ‘Getting a bit hot in here,’ he says.

  Nelson pushes Jimmy back down into his seat. He looms over the cringing younger man. The woman, who has reappeared in the window, beats a hasty retreat.

  ‘What do you know about the Smith Museum?’

  ‘Me? Nothing. What would a bloke like me know about a museum?’ Olson reminds Nelson of a character in a classic TV serial, years ago. Uriah something. Always banging on about being humble, but evil through and through.

  ‘Why did you jump like a cat on hot bricks when I mentioned it?’ The simile is all too apt. Nelson feels the sweat running down his back. He feels more nauseous than ever.

  Jimmy slumps forward on the slatted bench. Nelson sits opposite, breathing hard.

  ‘It’s just something the Vicar said.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well I met him one day down at the docks and I said how are you Vicar, friendly like, and he said he’d been to the Smith Museum. I thought he was joking because museums are for kids, aren’t they? So I says what were you doing at a museum Vicar, and he says I went to see a lady.’

  ‘A lady?’

  ‘Yeah. So I says, still thinking he was joking, was she in a glass case, like she was a mummy or something, and he says no she was flesh and blood alright.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘No. On my mother’s life.’

  ‘Your mother’s dead.’

  ‘On her grave then.’

  Nelson can’t stand it anymore. He pushes open the wooden door and heads for the showers. He stands under the blissfully cold water until he is sure that Olson has gone. Then he dives into the tepid pool and swims non-stop for twenty minutes.

  Nelson is drinking overpriced cappuccino in the hotel lounge when he gets the call from Clough.

  ‘Hi boss. You home yet?’

  Nelson has told the team that he’s going home early so that he can have a meal out with Michelle. He knows they are taking bets on whether he’ll come back to the office.

  ‘Almost. Have you got anything for me?’

  ‘Well, you know you said to check up on the Smith family, see if there were any convictions, anything like that?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well I’ve got one. A conviction for criminal damage. Part of an animal rights demonstration.’

  Nelson thinks of a pale intense face fringed by dark hair. ‘Was it the daughter? Caroline?’

  ‘No.’ Clough is savouring the moment. ‘Romilly Maud Smith, aged fifty-five. Lady Smith to you.’

  ‘The wife?’

  ‘That’s right. Looks like Lady Smith was part of a group that broke into a pharmaceutical company to protest about animal testing.’

  ‘Jesus! Wonder what Danforth Smith thought about that.’

  ‘He must have known. It was in the papers. The Evening News described her as a “mother figure” to the group. Her code name was Big Mama.’

  ‘What did she get?’

  ‘Two hundred pound fine.’

  ‘Any other convictions?’

  ‘No, but according to the papers the group had been involved in lots of other demos. They’re organised, these animal rights nutters.’

  Are they nutters thinks Nelson, as he drives home at only a few miles over the speed limit. In his experience, animal rights activists are highly principled people, which makes them dangerous. Even so, he can’t quite equate the elegant woman that he saw this morning with a camouflage-wearing extremist going by the name of Big Mama. What did Danforth Smith think about his wife’s activities? And what was an animal rights campaigner doing married to a racehorse trainer in the first place? Danforth obviously loved his horses, but in Nelson’s mind racehorses are linked to hunting and shooting and other bloodthirsty pursuits. He remembers his shock when Judy told him that she used to go hunting. ‘It was a pony club thing,’ she’d said. Pony club! Just when you thought you knew someone, they come out with something like that. Judy had done good work though, coming up with Cathbad on the CCTV. According to Judy, though, Cathbad had an alibi, which doesn’t surprise Nelson at all. Cathbad had been visiting Caroline Smith. Are they having an affair? Caroline is rather attractive in a slightly nutty way. Nelson imagines that she would be just Cathbad’s type.

  So Caroline is having an affair with a druid and Romilly is a secret activist. How many other skeletons are going to tumble out of the Smith closet? Thinking of skeletons reminds him of Bishop Augustine and Ruth’s amazing revelation. How coolly she had put it. ‘Anything interesting?’ that slimy Phil had asked. ‘Rather interesting, yes,’ Ruth had replied. Nelson never admires Ruth more than when he sees her doing her professional stuff. She is so sure of herself, there is none of that ‘oh I don’t know’ nonsense that you get with some women, no trying to ingratiate herself with men by playing on their vanity. Ruth knows that she is as good as any man and she says so. It’s refreshing. Nelson does not want to admit, even to himself, that he finds it sexy.

  Which ‘lady’ had the Vicar been meeting at the museum? Caroline? Romilly, Lady Smith? It could even be Bishop Augustine, the amazing transvestite bishop, herself. But ‘flesh and blood’ Jimmy had said. What is the link between the museum and the stables, apart from the Smith family? And the fact that two men, in perfect health a few days ago, are now dead.

  Nelson reaches the King’s Lynn roundabout. After a moment’s hesitation, he takes the turn for the station. He’ll just pop in for a few minutes, talk to Judy and Clough about the case. He’ll still be back in plenty of time to take Michelle out for a meal.

  CHAPTER 18

  ‘And here we have oak with recessed brass handles. This one has a rather nice inlaid cross in the middle. Very popular with Catholics.’

  ‘My husband wasn’t a Catholic,’ says Romilly Smith. Though the Smiths must have been Catholic once, she thinks, remembering Bishop Augustine. Dan had been so intrigued by that whole business with the coffin. It was just the sort of thing that interested him. Anything to do with the past, and especially his own ancestors, had him absolutely in thrall. Romilly was born in South Africa, and though she went to boarding school in England she still thinks of herself as a wanderer, stateless. Classless too, despite the ghastly upper-class accent that she’s stuck with. Still, there’s no denying that it comes in rather useful at times. She hates hearing herself braying away at assistants in shops, but when she was arrested the police treated her quite differently as soon as she opened her mouth. She despises the English class system. But Dan – Dan was an English aristocrat through and through.

  ‘Any special songs? My Way is still popular, though a lot of younger bereaved prefer The Wind Beneath My Wings or even Angels.’

  Randolph said that it was too early to call in the undertakers. They don’t even know when Dan’s body will be released. But Romilly had been seized by a desire to do something – organise the funeral, sort out paperwork, sell the house, put the horses out to grass – anything rather than this ghastly sitting around, with everyone looking at her in that ridiculous way and the children either weeping or arguing. Tamsin, when she arrived, was an ally. ‘It’s no good moping,’ she had snapped at Caroline. ‘We’ve got to get organised.’ ‘Why?’ Randolph had asked, with that vagueness which everyone except his immediate family seemed to find so endearing. ‘For fuck’s sa
ke, Randolph,’ Tamsin had exploded. ‘There are things to do.’

  So now Romilly and Tamsin are sitting interviewing the undertaker, a vaguely sinister man in a snowflake-patterned sweater. Randolph has roared off somewhere in the Porsche and Caroline is in the office talking to owners, who are probably interspersing condolences with demands that their horses be moved to another trainer. Romilly despises owners. None of them love their horses. They just want the kudos of swanking around the racecourse in stupid hats, going into the Owners and Trainers bar and talking about ‘my horse’. Half of them wouldn’t recognise ‘their’ horse if it bit them, which it probably would, given the chance.

  At least Dan had genuinely loved the horses. That’s how they had met. Romilly was working at a horse refuge near Norwich. Two horses had been brought in, unwanted and scared but otherwise completely fit. The refuge couldn’t afford to keep them (they needed to save their money for sick animals) so Romilly had been given the job of ringing round local horse owners to ask if they could give them a temporary home. They had all refused. Horses are expensive and no one wanted the two unknown quantities who would guzzle their hay and probably frighten their own animals. Except Danforth Smith. He had arrived that very afternoon with a smart blue horsebox emblazoned with the words Slaughter Hill Racing Stables in gold. He had spoken gently to the frightened animals, loaded them with infinite patience, and by the time that he turned to Romilly with a courteous query about her availability for dinner that night, she was his for the asking. They were married six months later. Maybe it didn’t hurt that, as well as an obvious love for animals, Danforth had limitless money and was building a large modern house which clearly needed a woman’s touch. Romilly was getting tired of mud and dirt and encrusted denim; all the perks of working with horses. She wanted animals, but luxury too – a package that seemed to be offered by the tall, beaky-nosed man who knew how to talk to horses.