A Room Full Of Bones

by Elly Griffiths

  ‘Can I help?’ asks Max. He is looking at Kate. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he says softly.

  ‘She’s heavy,’ warns Ruth, but Max lifts the laden car seat easily with one hand. As he follows Ruth along the path, she can’t help thinking that they look like a parody of a nuclear family. Mum, Dad and baby returning from a day out. Not to mention the dog, currently sniffing excitedly under the blackberry bushes, and the (absent) cat. Ruth opens the door, kicking aside the post. Claudia rushes through to the kitchen and Ruth hears her drinking noisily out of Flint’s water bowl.

  ‘Shall I take Kate upstairs?’ says Max.

  Now this really does feel like a step too far. Max has been to the house before but never upstairs. No one goes upstairs except Nelson that one time and, it now transpires, Judy and Cathbad. Besides, she hasn’t made her bed.

  ‘I’ll take her,’ says Ruth. ‘Make yourself at home.’

  In the bedroom, Ruth takes off Kate’s outer layer of clothes and lays her in her cot, which is beside Ruth’s bed. There is a spare room, which is now almost clear, but Ruth finds herself curiously unwilling to move Kate. She likes hearing her breathing in the night, and it’s easier when Kate wakes up just to reach over and pick her up. They often end up sleeping in the double bed together, something that is much frowned upon by the baby books.

  Ruth hastily straightens her duvet and wonders about putting on some perfume. No, too obvious. She brushes her hair and peers at her reflection in the mirror. She’s not used to looking at herself, really looking as opposed to checking whether or not she has something stuck in her teeth. Pale skin, pink cheeks, brown hair. She wishes she had cheekbones like Shona. In fact, she wishes she could borrow Shona’s face for the evening. Ruth’s been told that her best feature is her smile but she never smiles when looking in the mirror so that’s not much help. She scowls now, pulling the brush through her tangled hair. She hasn’t even got a hairstyle like other women, she thinks bitterly. Her hair just hangs to her shoulders, mid-brown and slightly wavy, as it has done since childhood. Over the last year she has noticed a few grey hairs appearing. Soon she’ll be a white-haired old hag, living alone with her cat, frightening children on Halloween. Something to look forward to, she thinks, turning away from the mirror, smiling now.

  When she gets downstairs, Max has collected the Chinese from the car and put it on the table. He has opened the bottle of wine and found glasses. Claudia is lying panting in front of the fireplace. Flint comes in through the cat flap and walks slowly past the dog, daring her to move. Claudia watches, bright-eyed.

  ‘Is this OK?’ says Max. ‘I didn’t get it out in case it got cold.’

  And suddenly it is OK. Ruth doesn’t feel self-conscious any more. They drink wine and eat crispy aromatic duck and talk about Cathbad, Aborigines, Brighton, Norfolk, Gay Pride, Dreamtime, fire rituals, university politics, the difference between cats and dogs. They don’t talk about the past, the fact that they were once almost involved in a relationship, a relationship curtailed by kidnap and a long-forgotten murder. They don’t talk about Nelson or Kate. Max does say once that it seems strange to see her with a baby.

  ‘It feels odd to me too,’ says Ruth. ‘I still don’t really feel like a mother, one of those women who can do it all. You know, have babies, bake cakes, make potato prints.’

  ‘Potato prints?’ repeats Max, laughing.

  ‘You know,’ says Ruth, rather crossly. ‘Cut a potato in half and make it into a star shape or something. Sandra, my childminder, is always doing stuff like that. I did try once. I tried to make a K shape on a potato but I got it wrong, I didn’t realise it had to be reversed so that it would print out the right way round. Kate wasn’t interested anyway. She’s too young. I just wanted to do it for myself.’

  ‘Ruth,’ says Max, still smiling. ‘You don’t need to make potato prints. You’re brilliant and beautiful. I bet you’re a great mum.’

  But, just at that moment, Ruth doesn’t care about being a great mum or a brilliant archaeologist. Max has called her beautiful.

  ‘Shall I drive?’ says Michelle. Nelson shakes his head. Apart from a few occasions when he has had too much to drink, he has never been driven by his wife. To him, it’s a reversal of the natural order of things.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ he says. ‘It’s just the sun.’

  Michelle looks at him doubtfully. ‘It’s November,’ she says. ‘It’s not that hot.’

  ‘It feels hot after Norfolk. Come on. Let’s go.’

  At first he feels OK. It’s a comfort to be in the car, changing gear, looking in the mirror, not having to walk and talk. Then, as they pass the Brighton gates, the road ahead shimmers and almost disappears. For one terrifying moment, Nelson thinks he sees a lorry bearing down on them. Then the lorry turns into a skull with glowing red eyes. Suddenly he knows he’s going to be sick.

  ‘Harry! What’s happening?’

  Somehow Nelson makes it onto the hard shoulder. He staggers out of the car and is violently sick in the undergrowth. He feels hot and cold in rapid succession. Crouched on the scrubby grass at the side of the road, he stares at a twig as it smoothly turns into a snake.

  ‘Harry.’ Michelle puts her hand on his shoulder. She sounds scared.

  ‘I’m OK.’ Nelson forces himself to stand up. ‘Must be something I ate. Those bloody chips.’

  ‘I’ll drive,’ says Michelle.

  This time, Nelson doesn’t argue.

  Kate wakes at ten-thirty. Her crying soon escalates from sad whimpers into full-blown howling. Ruth rushes upstairs and attempts long-range soothing, as recommended by the books. ‘It’s OK, Kate. It’s OK. Go back to sleep.’ Kate roars louder, arching her back and flailing her arms. The sound seems to expand to fill the little house. God knows what Max must be thinking. Ruth picks Kate up and paces the room with her. ‘It’s OK. It’s OK.’ Kate is rigid against her shoulder but the crying decreases slightly in volume. Ruth starts to sing.

  ‘Three little men in a flying saucer…’ Kate stops sobbing but manages to convey that she will start again if Ruth dares to try to put her down.

  ‘Two little men…’

  ‘Is she all right?’

  Max is standing in the doorway. Ruth feels her face growing red, embarrassed to be caught singing, embarrassed to be failing in what the books call ‘crying management’, embarrassed that Max is in her bedroom with the bed stretched out, vast and smooth, between them.

  ‘Shall I hold her for a bit?’

  Ruth hands Kate over and Max strides along the landing with the baby against his shoulder. From the bottom of the stairs Claudia and Flint watch anxiously. Kate’s head lolls against Max’s neck. ‘Dada’, she says sleepily.

  By the time they reach the outskirts of Norwich, Nelson is almost delirious. Strange lights and shapes blur before his eyes. When he looks at Michelle her profile is wonderfully familiar but, when she turns slightly, he sees the skull beneath the skin.

  ‘Don’t,’ he mutters. ‘Don’t look…’

  Michelle drives straight past the turn-off to King’s Lynn and heads into Norwich. Nelson wakes from a dream of skulls and snakes and buried children.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To A and E,’ says Michelle grimly.

  CHAPTER 21

  At first Judy doesn’t recognise the voice on the phone.

  ‘DS Johnson? It’s Superintendent Whitcliffe here.’

  Judy sits up in bed, feeling the utter wrongness of being caught talking to the Superintendent while wearing a baby doll nightdress. Next to her, Darren stirs in his sleep.

  ‘Morning, sir.’ Judy looks around the room for something to make her feel more professional. She puts on her watch.

  ‘Johnson. DCI Nelson has been taken ill in the night. He’s in the university hospital. It looks bad. I’m making you SIO on the drugs case and the museum case.’

  Senior Investigating Officer. At first that is all Judy can hear, then the rest of the sentence filters through.
r />   ‘Nelson’s in hospital? What happened?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure. I’ve just come off the phone to his wife. It might be something viral, maybe meningitis. He’s unconscious.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s all I know but it sounds serious. He’s in intensive care. I’m going to need you to rally the team. They’ll be in shock.’

  Clough will also be madder than a snake, thinks Judy, getting out of bed. He’ll think he should have been put in charge. He’ll be devastated about the boss too; he worships Nelson.

  I’ll call a meeting,’ says Whitcliffe.

  Judy looks at her watch. It’s Sunday and they’re meant to be having lunch with Darren’s parents.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ she says.

  ‘Good girl. I’ll see you there.’

  Ruth, too, is in bed. Weak sunlight is filtering through the blinds, she stretches and is instantly aware of two, no three, things. There are no blinds in her bedroom, she must be in the spare room. It’s morning and Kate isn’t awake yet and she’s in bed with Max.

  The last thing will have to wait for a moment. She pads across the landing and looks into Kate’s cot, standing beside the pristine double bed. Kate is awake too, looking at the light reflected on the ceiling. Her dark eyes are wide open and she’s smiling.

  ‘Good morning darling,’ whispers Ruth.

  Kate’s smile turns into a full-on beam. ‘Mum,’ she says.

  Ruth picks up Kate and carries her downstairs. In the sitting room she is startled by a large furry shape hurtling towards her. Christ, she’d forgotten the dog. Claudia is friendly but she is anxious to tell Ruth that she’s hungry. Ruth heats up a bottle for Kate and pours milk into instant porridge. Then she puts on the kettle and gives Claudia a piece of bread. It disappears in a second and Claudia looks at her expectantly. Feeling treacherous, she puts some cat food in a bowl and pushes it towards Claudia. There’s no sign of Flint.

  It’s eight o’clock. Still early for normal people but afternoon as far as Kate is concerned. Ruth switches on the radio and is surprised to hear organ music blasting out. Of course, it’s Sunday. She turns off the radio and puts bread in the toaster. Claudia is sitting hopefully under Kate’s high chair. Kate drops porridge onto her head.

  It takes two cups of tea before Ruth can think about last night. After Kate had fallen asleep in Max’s arms, he had put her into her cot and opened his arms to Ruth. As simple as that. In the end, she hadn’t thought about it at all. Like sleepwalkers they had moved into the spare room and made love on the narrow bed. Not one word was spoken. The whole thing had seemed natural and right, as if they really had been the married couple who had entered the house with their baby only hours before. Very different from Ruth’s last sexual encounter with Nelson, when they had come together through fear and a mutual, desperate longing. In fact, the intensity of emotion had been almost unbearable. But some time during last night Ruth had vowed never to think about Nelson again.

  She takes her tea and toast to the table by the window. Flint comes in and sits in a patch of sunlight, washing himself with his leg in the air. Kate plays with one of her birthday presents, a miniature garden complete with plastic flowers and vegetables that must be slotted into the correctly shaped holes. Kate is quite good at this game though she sometimes loses patience altogether and throws the plastic flowers around the room. Where does she get this temper from? Ruth is a simmerer, slow to anger and slow to forget. She bets that Nelson had tantrums as a child. In fact he probably has them now, yelling at his team, driving off in a cloud of exhaust smoke. ‘Just fucking do it,’ she heard him say once to Clough. Not the most tactful management style in the world. But then Ruth has never had to manage anyone but herself. And she’s thinking about Nelson again.

  It’s a beautiful crisp winter morning. The sky is a clear pale blue, the sea, glimpsed over the miles of white grass, is a darker blue, almost grey. Occasionally a cloud of birds will rise up out of the reeds, wheeling and turning in the vast sky. Some birds will spend the winter on the mud flats, others are preparing for the long journey south. A few days ago Ruth saw a peregrine, swooping down on some unsuspecting prey in the long grass. Is that like Max, she wonders now, swooping down on her when she is alone and vulnerable? It hadn’t felt like that but what does she know? She doesn’t exactly have a good track record in romance.

  ‘Morning.’ Max stands in the doorway, looking less like a bird of prey than a large dog, a wolfhound maybe, hair dishevelled, rangy body at ease with itself. Claudia goes mad with delight, rushing round the room for something to bring him and coming up with one of Ruth’s bras, tugged out of the laundry basket. Max looks at Ruth and they both laugh. Kate, carefully fitting vegetables into holes, laughs too.

  ‘Tea?’ says Ruth.

  It isn’t going to be so difficult after all.

  Whitcliffe calls the team together and they sit in the briefing room, sleepy and resentful at being summoned on a Sunday morning. Whitcliffe tells them about Nelson; he pitches it just right, sympathetic yet businesslike. Judy stands behind him, feeling horribly self-conscious. She can see the faces of her colleagues as they take in the news. Clough looks stunned; he opens his mouth to speak and then shuts it again, a half-eaten chocolate bar falls to the floor. Tanya looks concerned, ‘Can we send flowers or something?’ Tom Henty is stolid, unmoveable, though Judy notices that, when he gathers his papers together, his hands are not altogether steady. Rocky doesn’t seem to have understood a word.

  Clough is in such a state of shock that he doesn’t seem to take in Whitcliffe’s breezy statement that Judy ‘is going to take over for the time being’. It is only when she gets up and walks to the whiteboard that his head jerks up and he stares at her with something approaching hatred. Judy herself is shaking slightly as she writes the date on the board. Her writing seems schoolgirlish and unformed after Nelson’s passionate scrawl. She sees Tanya watching her, her body language sliding almost comically between concern (head on one side) and resentment (narrowed eyes, tapping foot).

  ‘Operation Octopus,’ Judy writes on the board. That is the name they are giving to the drugs case, chosen by Clough to reflect the fact that the drugs are thought to be coming by sea and that the smugglers seem to have tentacles everywhere. ‘It’s like the mafia,’ says Clough, who loves the Godfather films and frequently intones ‘I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse’ when alone with a mirror. ‘Possible sources,’ writes Judy. ‘The docks, the airport, freight.’ Forensics has identified traces of straw on some of the drugs seized in the city. This may indicate that they were transported in freight packing cases. Judy says this now, making neat lines on her chart.

  ‘But we know all this,’ drawls Tanya. ‘Are there any new leads?’

  ‘Just recapping,’ says Judy briskly. ‘I’m going to talk to Jimmy Olson.’

  ‘But he’s the boss’s source,’ protests Clough. ‘Only the boss talks to Jimmy. You’ll blow his cover.’

  ‘I want to talk to all the local haulage companies,’ says Judy, ignoring him.

  ‘We’ve done that,’ says Clough.

  ‘Well, we’ll do it again,’ says Judy. ‘I’m sure we’re missing something.’

  Clough opens his mouth to speak, but before Judy’s leadership skills can be tested the door opens and the duty sergeant comes in. He looks embarrassed. ‘I’ve got a message. Someone asking for the boss.’ He looks doubtfully at Judy, who bites back a temptation to say that she is the boss now.

  The message is from Randolph, now Lord, Smith. He wants to talk to someone about his father’s death. He has some new evidence, he says.

  ‘I’ll go and see him,’ says Judy. She looks at the uncooperative faces of her fellow police officers. ‘You can come with me, Dave.’

  CHAPTER 22

  Judy and Clough drive to the stables in Judy’s car, a showy jeep. Usually Clough has a few jokes to make at the car’s expense but today he is silent, slouched in the passenger seat, biting th
e skin around his fingernails. Maybe, thinks Judy, when Clough has no food to eat, he starts on his own extremities. With any luck, he’ll have consumed half his arm by the time they get to Slaughter Hill.

  ‘Still can’t believe it about the boss,’ says Clough, as they trundle through the country lanes. ‘What did Whitcliffe say? A viral infection?’

  ‘I don’t think they know what it is,’ says Judy.

  ‘Shall I ring Michelle?’ says Clough, getting out his phone. Is he trying to show her that he’s on speed-dialling terms with the Nelsons? Judy doesn’t have Michelle’s number; she’s only spoken to her once or twice.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ she says. ‘She might be at the hospital or trying to get some sleep.’

  ‘I’ll text then,’ says Clough. ‘Bloody hell. The boss hasn’t had a day off sick in his life.’

  ‘I believe you,’ says Judy. Nelson famously even hates going on holiday.

  ‘I saved his life once,’ says Clough.

  ‘I know you did,’ says Judy. She feels unaccountably sorry for him.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ says Clough again. ‘I can’t believe it.’ And they drive on in silence through the skeletal trees.

  Sunday doesn’t seem to be a day of rest at the racing stables. They pass a line of horses in the lane, and when Judy parks her car by Caroline’s cottage they see stable lads leading more horses into a large round building with wooden doors.

  ‘What the hell’s that?’ asks Clough.

  ‘It’s a horse walker,’ says Judy knowledgeably, having learnt this on her previous visit. ‘They put the horses in there for exercise or to calm them down.’

  They watch as the horses are led into separate compartments and move forward as the machine starts working. It’s rather like being stuck in a never-ending revolving door.

  ‘Cruel, that’s what I call it,’ says Clough.

  ‘The horses love it,’ says Judy.

  Aside from a few curious glances, the stable lads ignore them, but, when they enter the yard Len Harris is waiting for them. His stance, jodhpur’d legs wide apart, does not look particularly welcoming.