A Room Full Of Bones

by Elly Griffiths

  ‘You… came to…’ Nelson is speechless. He has always known that Cathbad is more or less mad but this? This seems to be pure delusion. He wonders if Cathbad is on drugs.

  Cathbad’s next words don’t exactly put him at his ease. ‘I prepared a libation and took certain substances. I entered a dream state and I came to rescue you.’ He smiles kindly at Nelson.

  ‘Well I’m very grateful,’ says Nelson sarcastically. ‘I hope I said thank you at the time?’

  ‘You think you don’t remember,’ says Cathbad, ‘but you do. You remember the water and the darkness and Erik guarding the portal to the afterlife.’

  Cathbad doesn’t seem to expect any answer to this, which is lucky because Nelson shows no sign of giving one. Instead, Cathbad leans over and takes a handful of the grapes that he has brought with him.

  ‘Did you know someone tried to kill me last night?’ he says chattily.

  ‘Is this something else that happened in your bloody dream world?’

  ‘No. Someone sent me a poisonous snake.’

  ‘What?’ Nelson struggles to sit up. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘A venomous snake was sent to the university, addressed to me. I got a call from the police as I was on my way here. I told them I was a friend of yours.’

  Nelson groans inwardly. That’s all he needs. Head office thinking that he’s best mates with a warlock in a purple cloak. And what the hell’s this about another bloody snake? He thinks of the warnings in the letters about the Great Snake. Could this be the work of the Elginists? But Cathbad’s one of them, isn’t he?

  ‘Do they know who sent it?’

  ‘They think it’s some animal rights group but I have my doubts. I have a lot of enemies. The snake’s fine,’ he adds. ‘They’ve sent it to a zoo near Great Yarmouth.’

  There’s not a lot Nelson can say to that. He looks at Cathbad, who is calmly finishing off the last of the grapes. The ward is quiet; all the other patients seem asleep. The afternoon sun makes squares on the worn lino floor. A very old woman is pushing a trolley laden with tea, coffee and squares of cake. Is Cathbad mad or is he?

  One thing is certain: Nelson will never tell a living soul that he did see Erik.

  Kate wants to see the stuffed animals again so Ruth is forced to run the gamut of the glass eyes. Kate stands for ages, breathing heavily on the glass, watching the foxes looking into their trompe l’oeil den. A squirrel teeters precariously on the branch above.

  ‘Fox,’ says Kate in ecstasy.

  ‘Yes, fox,’ says Ruth, who wants to get home. ‘Like Fantastic Mr Fox. Say goodbye to the fox, Kate. We’ve got to get home to Flint.’

  ‘Fox,’ says Kate, ignoring her. ‘Fox, box.’

  ‘She’s a poet,’ says a voice behind them. Ruth can see Bob Woonunga’s smile reflected in the cabinet doors. Ruth, instinctively, moves between him and Kate. Behind her, Kate starts making the didgeridoo sound.

  ‘Don’t be scared, Ruth.’ Bob sounds amused. ‘I’m your friend. Your friendly neighbour.’

  Is he her friend? He has certainly always been friendly towards her. Didn’t he find Flint that first night? In fact, both Flint and Kate seem entranced by him. And Cathbad likes him, though Cathbad also seems believe that he was capable of casting a spell that killed a man.

  ‘I heard that the skulls are going back,’ says Ruth. ‘You must be pleased.’

  Bob is playing peek-a-boo with Kate, but when he looks up to meet Ruth’s eyes his face isn’t playful in the least. ‘I’m pleased, of course,’ he says. ‘But I’ve just been down to the cellars. The way those bones were kept! There’s no respect, no reverence, not even an acknowledgement that they’re human. I tell you, Ruth, it turned my stomach.’

  ‘I did say in my report that they weren’t kept in appropriate conditions,’ says Ruth weakly.

  ‘I know you did,’ says Bob, his voice softening. ‘I knew all along that you were on our side.’

  Is that why you put me under a circle of protection, thinks Ruth. But she doesn’t believe in the curse, does she? Surreptitiously, she takes Kate’s hand.

  ‘We’d better be going.’

  ‘I hope you’ll come to the repatriation ceremony. It’ll be something else, I promise you.’

  ‘I’d like to come. Thank you.’

  ‘Bye Ruth,’ Bob stands aside. ‘Bye Kate.’

  As they go out of the room, Ruth sees the case containing the grass snake, its glass eyes winking in the afternoon sunlight.

  Up next is Judy. She hasn’t brought flowers or grapes. Instead she dumps a couple of lurid-looking paperbacks on his locker.

  ‘Thought you might want something to read.’

  Nelson isn’t much of a reader. One of the books has a skull on the cover, the other a swastika. He squints at the blurbs: conspiracy… war… torture… blackmail… death. Judy really has him down as the sensitive type, doesn’t she?

  ‘I heard all about last night,’ he says.

  ‘Who from? Oh, Clough’s been in has he? What did he tell you?’

  ‘Just that you solved Operation Octopus.’

  Judy seems to relax slightly. ‘It was a lucky guess. A series of lucky guesses.’

  ‘Sounded like good police work to me.’

  Judy looks away. ‘I messed up. Clough had to save me.’

  ‘He saved me once,’ says Nelson. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘I should never have gone there without back-up but I wanted to solve it on my own.’

  ‘Policing’s about teamwork,’ says Nelson, who has never waited for back-up in his life.

  ‘You’re right,’ says Judy, fiddling with a hand sanitiser. ‘Clough’s a better team player than me.’

  ‘I hear he wrestled a mad horse to the ground.’

  Judy laughs. ‘He was scared stiff. Did he tell you that? Mind you, it was terrifying, shut in a small space with a horse like that. I like horses but I’m not sure I ever want to see one again.’

  ‘So you’re not going to go back and see Randolph Smith?’

  ‘Did Clough tell you I fancied him? I don’t. He was brilliant last night though. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t turned up when he did.’

  ‘So the older sister turned out to be the black sheep?’

  ‘Yes. She was the clever one, despised the other two. Hated the dad too, by all accounts. Mind you, Caroline, the younger sister, is a bit mad too.’

  She tells Nelson about the dead snakes and the men dancing in the woods.

  ‘Snakes again,’ says Nelson.

  ‘Yes, turns out that Danforth Smith was terrified of them.’

  With reason, thinks Nelson. Aloud he says, ‘And this Caroline’s a friend of Cathbad’s? Figures.’

  ‘She wanted her father to give back the Aborigine bones. It sounds like she was obsessed with them.’

  ‘Do you think she wrote the letters to the curator? And there was a snake found in the room with the body. Maybe that was her too.’

  ‘I don’t know. She didn’t mention the curator. It seemed to be all about her dad. Like it was all his fault.’

  ‘It’s always the dad’s fault,’ says Nelson.

  Judy thinks of her own genial, horse-loving father. ‘I think dads are OK,’ she says.

  She sounds so like her old self that Nelson begins to hope that the silent, withdrawn Judy has gone for good. Maybe now they can get back to police work. He’ll give her some more responsibility. She didn’t do so badly with Operation Octopus, after all. Then she spoils everything by telling him that she’s pregnant.

  Flint is delighted to see Ruth and Kate. He has been alone all day, he tells them, purring sinuously about their ankles, starving and neglected. He has, in fact, been asleep in the airing cupboard. Ruth feeds her cat and starts making some pasta. It’s only five o’clock but it’s dark outside. Kate must be tired, she has only had a tiny sleep in the car. Maybe last night will herald a wonderful new era of sleeping through the night. They’ll have supp
er at six, Kate will be in bed at seven and Ruth can have all evening watching television and drinking white wine. Heaven.

  She has almost forgotten Cathbad and the horrors of last night. Nelson is going to be all right. Michelle let her see him, perhaps she might even allow Nelson to have regular contact with Kate. She admitted that he wants to see her. Ruth knows how much that admission cost Michelle, how much it cost Michelle to come to her house and beg her to visit her husband. She would do anything for him, she said. Ruth doesn’t know if she’s ever loved anyone that much. Except Kate, of course.

  She half expects Max to ring but he doesn’t. After the last few days, it seems strange to have no one knocking on the door demanding help or babbling about the Dreaming. After supper, Ruth tries to read a Percy the Park-Keeper book to Kate but she’s more interested in charging around the room with her plastic vegetables. Ruth is determined not to switch on the TV but Kate does it for her (she loves the remote) and soon they are both dozing in front of In the Night Garden. Ruth forces herself to her feet. She’s got to keep Kate awake for a little longer. Routine, she tells herself sternly, it’s all about routine. She puts Kate in her cot while she runs the bath and they both have a strenuous half-hour playing with water. Kate’s eyes start drooping as soon as Ruth puts her into bed. She is asleep before Ruth has read two pages of After the Storm. Ruth finishes the book anyway. She loves it that all the animals find a home in the big tree. She doubts that Norfolk Social Services will be so efficient after last night’s high winds.

  Ruth tiptoes out onto the landing. All evening she has avoided looking into the spare room but now she opens the door quietly. The bed is neatly made but lying on the cover is a single feather, long and beautiful, a pheasant’s perhaps. Ruth stays looking at it for a long time.

  Nelson’s last visitor is the most surprising. Chris Stephenson, swaggering through the doors as if he’s paying a state visit. Disappointingly, two of the nurses recognise him and flutter around calling him ‘Doctor’ Stephenson. They even offer to get him a cup of tea, although the old woman with the trolley is long gone.

  ‘Hi Nelson,’ Stephenson greets him. ‘Not dead yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Bet you can’t guess why I’m here.’

  ‘Was it to bring me flowers?’

  ‘Not allowed. Health and safety.’ Stephenson hasn’t brought any sort of present, not even grapes. Nelson guesses that this call is about business rather than concern for his well-being.

  The nurses bring tea in chipped green cups. Stephenson makes a big thing about not needing sugar because he’s sweet enough already. For the first time that day, Nelson feels sick.

  ‘Your friend Ruth Galloway,’ says Stephenson by way of introduction, slurping his tea.

  ‘What about her?’ asks Nelson cautiously. He doesn’t know how much his colleagues know about his relationship with Ruth. He thinks that Judy has suspicions about Kate’s parentage; Clough has probably never given it a thought.

  ‘Remember the bishop? The one that turned out to be a tranny? Well, Ruth sent off some of the material to be analysed. The silk stuff that was wrapped round the bones. Results came back today and guess what they found?’

  ‘Surprise me.’

  ‘Traces of a fungus called aspergillus.’

  He leans back as if expecting a reaction. Nelson looks at him coldly. ‘That doesn’t mean a lot to me, Chris.’

  ‘They’re spores, incredibly toxic. They can stay alive for hundreds, thousands, of years. As soon as the spores come into contact with the air, they enter the nose, mouth and mucous membranes. They can cause headaches, vomiting and fever. In people with a weakened immune system, it can result in organ failure and death.’

  Nelson looks at him, ‘Danforth Smith.’

  ‘Yes. He was diabetic, you say. That would have compromised his immune system. He died from heart failure. Could have been brought on by contact with these spores. If we’d done an autopsy, we’d have known.’ He sounds regretful.

  ‘And the curator,’ says Nelson, ‘Neil Topham. If he’d opened the coffin…’ He thinks of the DIY tools in Topham’s office, of the open window and the curtains blowing. If the spores had got into the air and into Topham’s mouth and nose…

  ‘He was a druggy,’ says Stephenson, with his usual sensitivity. ‘Immune system would have been shot to pieces. One whiff of aspergillus and he’d have been out like a light. Cause of death was lung failure. Spores would have gone straight onto the lungs.’

  ‘Is this asperthing, this spore, what made me ill?’

  ‘I think so. You were next to Lord Smith when the coffin was opened. You would have got a direct hit but you’re healthy, you were able to fight it off.’

  Only just, thinks Nelson. Another thought strikes him. ‘What about Ruth? She was right there too.’

  Stephenson laughs. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. She was about to look into the coffin when she got a phone call. She moved away and you and Lord Smith were the first to look inside. Whoever phoned Ruth probably saved her life.’

  Nelson would be willing to place a large bet on the identity of Ruth’s caller. There’s only one person it could have been. Cathbad to the rescue again.

  ‘Would these spores… could they give you nightmares, delusions?’

  Stephenson looks at him curiously. ‘I suppose so. One of the symptoms is a high fever. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Lord Smith’s wife mentioned that he had a terrible fever before he died, was seeing things, shouting out in his sleep.’

  ‘That was probably the aspergillus. Of course, we’ll never really know.’

  Did the poison spores give Danforth Smith nightmares about snakes and ghostly horsemen? Did they plunge Nelson into a shadow world of sea and sky and a man calling from a stone boat? As Stephenson says, he’ll probably never know. But it seems that the Aborigines are innocent; it was the bishop who did it, after all.

  ‘I’m going to ask the docs to do a chest radiograph on you,’ says Stephenson cheerily. ‘Something might show up.’

  ‘Thanks a lot.’

  ‘Why should you worry? It’s a rest cure in here.’

  Rest? This feels like the busiest day Nelson has ever had in his life. And as Stephenson saunters out of the ward, he sees Michelle and Maureen on their way in, both carrying covered bowls full of nourishing food.

  CHAPTER 32

  The Necromancer comes galloping around the corner of the all-weather track, the black earth flying up behind him. At the top of the hill, by the trees, a woman is standing. The horse starts violently at the unfamiliar figure, standing on his hind legs, nostrils wide with fear. But the horse’s rider just laughs and shifts his weight slightly in the saddle.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Romilly Smith. ‘Did I scare him?’

  Randolph laughs. ‘He’s just playing silly buggers.’ He pats the animal’s shuddering neck. ‘Calm down horse.’

  ‘I’d forgotten what a good rider you are,’ says Romilly, falling into step beside the horse.

  ‘I’d forgotten too,’ says Randolph, loosening the reins so that The Necromancer can stretch his neck. ‘Not that I could ride but how much I enjoyed it. I was devastated when I got too tall to be a jockey.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to be a jockey, darling. All that dieting plays havoc with your skin.’

  Randolph laughs and turns the horse towards the stables. Romilly again falls into step beside them. There is still frost on the ground and her smart boots crackle over the grass.

  ‘Are you really going to run the yard?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m going to give it a go,’ says Randolph. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Not at all. I think I’m going to move out. Give you some space.’ Romilly looks up at her son, sitting so loosely on the great black horse. He really is lovely, she thinks. I’m glad I don’t have to share him with another woman.

  ‘Are you still involved with them? The group?’

  Romilly pauses with her hand on The Necroma
ncer’s neck. ‘Well, the group’s rather gone into hiding… after that tip-off last night.’

  For a few minutes they walk in silence. Both know that it was Randolph who told the police. Eventually, Randolph says, almost apologetically, ‘You just can’t go round doing things like that, you know. Sending poisonous snakes to people.’

  ‘I know,’ Romilly sighs. ‘It would have shaken things up a bit though. Make people take notice.’

  ‘Do you think the police suspect you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they suspect – I’ve got a record after all – but we’ve all got alibis for last night. Pity it didn’t come off. We’d been planning it for ages.’

  ‘An innocent man could have been killed.’

  ‘Innocent animals die every day,’ Romilly counters. But she says it without real heat, as if her mind is elsewhere.

  ‘And that Vicar person,’ continues Randolph. ‘He’s a psychopath.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ says Romilly triumphantly. ‘He absolutely refused to kill Neil.’

  Randolph reins in so sharply that the horse stumbles. ‘What?’

  ‘I asked him to give Neil some contaminated drugs but he refused. You see, he’s quite moral really. For a drug dealer.’

  ‘You asked him to kill Neil? Why?’

  Romilly looks up at him. ‘Because Neil got you into drugs. I’ll never forgive him for that.’

  ‘He didn’t. We spent a couple of nights together, that was all. I’d started taking drugs at school, for God’s sake. Neil was just a supplier. Like your mate the Vicar.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ says Romilly calmly. ‘He was a bad influence. I was glad he died. I tried to scare him off before. That’s why I wrote him those letters.’

  Randolph looks at his mother, her silvery hair blowing back in the wind. She looks beautiful but somehow frightening, as if he doesn’t really know her at all.

  ‘Which letters? The ones the police kept going on about?’