A Room Full of Bones (22 page)

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.’

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 the 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.

‘We’re here to see Randolph Smith,’ says Judy, showing her ID.

‘Well, he’s not here,’ says Harris. ‘Doesn’t bother himself about the horses, Mr Randolph doesn’t. He’ll be up at the house.’

‘Can we walk through the yard?’ asks Judy.

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ says Harris. ‘There are some sensitive animals here and they might be upset.’

It didn’t seem to worry them before, thinks Judy. She doesn’t like having to retreat, she feels that it makes her lose face in front of Clough. Her colleague, though, is only too happy to be away from the terrifying beasts.

‘The size of them,’ he keeps saying, as they take the path behind the yard wall. ‘They’re massive. It’s not right.’

‘I think they’re beautiful,’ says Judy. ‘I wanted to be a jockey once.’

Clough laughs scornfully. ‘They don’t have
girl
jockeys.’

‘Yes they do,’ retorts Judy. ‘Women jockeys have competed in the Grand National.’

‘You’re too big.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

‘You know what I mean. You have to be tiny to be a jockey.’

Judy realises that he’s trying to backtrack. Nevertheless, she can’t help being pleased when he steps off the path and straight into a pile of horse manure.

Randolph is waiting outside the house. Somebody must have told him to expect them. Judy, who didn’t meet him on her previous visit, is surprised how handsome he is. He looks just like the hero in some Regency romance, an effect heightened by his rather long black hair and by his slightly distracted manner. Clough just thinks that he looks like a tosser.

Randolph shakes Judy’s hand. ‘Thanks so much for coming. Where’s DCI Nelson?’

‘He’s not available,’ says Judy. ‘I’m DS Johnson and this is DS Clough.’ She can see Randolph looking at Clough. Probably thinks he’s in charge just because he’s a man.

‘Let’s go into the house,’ says Randolph. ‘It’ll be easier to talk there.’
Safer
, he seems to imply.

They follow Randolph into the house, Clough surreptitiously wiping his feet. Judy, like Nelson before her, is surprised at how modern the house is. There seem to be no heirlooms or relics of the ancient house of Smith. Everything is as shiny and characterless as if it has just stepped out of a catalogue. Randolph leads the way through a gleaming modern kitchen, all brushed steel and red cabinets (no mention of coffee), and into a study crammed with trophies and pictures of horses. Is it his father’s study, wonders Judy. If so, does it seem strange to be receiving visitors here so soon after the old man’s death? Or is this what Randolph Smith has been waiting for all his life?

Randolph sits himself behind the desk. ‘Ma’s out,’ he says, though neither of them has mentioned his mother’s whereabouts. ‘Caroline’s off somewhere with her weirdo friends. So we won’t be interrupted.’

‘What about your other sister?’ asks Judy, remembering the disembodied voice.
For fuck’s sake Randolph
 …

‘Oh, Tammy’s gone hot-footing it back to London. She can’t stand too much of us country types. She’ll be back for the funeral.’

‘Do you have a date?’ ventures Judy.

‘Thursday,’ says Randolph, looking down at his hands. ‘It’s on Thursday. Thursday the twelfth.’

He lapses into silence. Judy looks at Clough.

‘You said something about new evidence,’ she prompts.

‘Yes,’ says Randolph. His eyes, which Judy had thought were black, are actually very dark blue. He runs his hand through his hair, making it stand up in an Elvis quiff.

‘Look. Officer. I don’t know you very well and what I have to tell you might sound strange but I promise you I’m not on drugs or … or having a nervous breakdown or anything. It’s just that some fairly odd things have been happening and I think they might be connected to Dad’s death. That’s all.’ He blinks at them engagingly. Judy smiles at him.

‘Why don’t you tell us?’ she says.

‘Well, it all started a few weeks ago. I was coming home after a late night and I didn’t want to disturb the old dears so I came in through the back gates – where the old house used to be – and drove through the park. It was about two or three in the morning, I was just coming through the wood, where the all-weather track ends, and suddenly I saw these three men. I couldn’t believe it at first but they were definitely there, in a clearing between the trees.’

‘What where they doing?’ asks Clough.

‘Well this sounds weird, but they had long sticks with sort of skulls on the end of them and they were dancing.’

‘Dancing?’

‘I know it sounds crazy,’ says Randolph, rather miserably. ‘But there was a fire and they were dancing round it. They heard my car and looked round. One of them waved his stick at me and shouted something.’

‘What did you do? Did you speak to them?’

‘No. I know it sounds pathetic but I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I drove off. Left my car outside Caroline’s house and went to bed. But I went back in the morning and the remains of the fire were still there. And there were these weird patterns drawn in the ashes.’

‘What sort of patterns?’

‘I can’t really describe them. Wavy lines and circles and star shapes. But they had definitely been drawn deliberately.’

‘And have you ever seen these men again?’ asks Judy, ignoring Clough, who is trying to exchange significant glances.

‘No, but about a week later I came home late again.’ He laughs. ‘I’m afraid I’m rather a nocturnal animal, Detective Sergeant. I left my car outside Caroline’s, and I thought I heard something in the yard. I went to check but I thought it was just a fox or maybe that infernal cat. There was no one there but the security lights were on. And then I saw it. A dead snake nailed up over one of the horse’s stalls.’

‘A dead snake?’

‘Yes. A grass snake, I think. I took it down and threw it in the compost heap.’

‘Did you tell anyone?’

‘No.’ He pauses. ‘The thing is, my father had a particular fear of snakes. When he was little he had this ghoulish Irish nanny who used to tell him ghost stories, but she also used to tell him stories about snakes. You know that before Saint Patrick came along Ireland used to be
infested with snakes? That’s what she said anyway. Anyway, she told him that, one day, a great snake – as green as poison – was going to come for him.’