Ruth Galloway (21 page)

‘It's useful,' says Ruth shortly. She's not about to tell him that she has kept it for sentimental reasons, which wouldn't be true. Well, not entirely true.

Peter sinks down in her visitor's chair. ‘Great office,' he says, looking up at Indiana Jones. Ten years ago, she hadn't been important enough for an office of her own.

‘Bit small,' she says.

‘You should see my office at UCL. I have to share it with an archivist with a personal freshness problem. I only get the desk Mondays and Thursdays.'

Ruth laughs. Peter could always make her laugh, she thinks grudgingly.

Peter smiles too, looking fleetingly like his old self, but then his face looks grave again.

‘What a terrible business on the Saltmarsh,' he says, ‘you finding that little girl's body.'

‘Yes.'

‘How did you know she was there?'

Ruth looks up sharply. This seems an odd question. Who was to say that it wasn't the police who discovered the location?

‘It was a hunch,' she said at last. ‘I was looking at the map and I saw a line leading from the Spenwell body to my Iron Age body to the henge. The posts that I showed you,
the causeway, they seemed to mark the route. I thought of cursuses, underground paths that seem to point to significant things in the landscape. I suddenly realised that the causeway was a cursus.'

‘And it led to the body?'

‘Yes.'

‘But are you saying it was deliberate? That someone buried her there knowing all about causeways and cursuswhatsits?'

‘Cursuses. I don't know. The police think that maybe the murderer knows about archaeology.'

‘
Do
they?' Peter is silent for a few seconds, obviously considering this. Then he looks up and says, ‘That reminds me, Erik's set up a dig next week to look at the causeway.'

‘Has he got police permission?'

‘Apparently so. He spoke to your mate Nelson. He says it's OK as long as they don't go into the henge circle. And, obviously, they've got to show the police anything they find.'

Erik has spoken to Nelson, whom apparently he dislikes and distrusts. Nelson has given permission for the dig. Ruth's head swims in a miasma of contradictions, loyalties, memories.

‘When did you see Erik?' she asks at last.

‘Yesterday. We had lunch together.'

‘Did you?' Ruth tries to imagine the scene. Erik always liked Peter, seemed to approve of him as a partner for Ruth, but she can't quite imagine them sitting down for a cosy pizza together.

‘Where did you go?'

‘Oh, some sushi place he knows.'

So, no pizza then. ‘Did he say anything about Cathbad? Michael Malone?'

‘Only that the police had got the wrong man. He seemed quite heated about it. Kept going on about a police state, you know what an old hippie he is.'

Yet Erik was quite prepared to go to Nelson for permission to dig, thinks Ruth. Nothing,
nothing
, comes in the way of the archaeology.

‘They're releasing Cathbad,' says Ruth. ‘It'll probably be on the news today.' Well, Nelson didn't tell her to keep it a secret.

‘Really?' says Peter with interest. ‘Releasing him without charge?'

‘There may be some charges, I don't know.'

‘Come off it, Ruth, you seem to know everything.'

‘I don't,' snaps Ruth, unreasonably irritated.

‘Sorry.' Peter looks contrite. It doesn't suit him. ‘So,' he asks brightly, ‘how's Shona?'

‘Fine. The same. Going on about how she's going to give up men and become a nun.'

‘Who is it this time?'

‘A lecturer. Married.'

‘Is he promising to leave his wife?'

‘Naturally.'

Peter sighs. ‘Poor old Shona.' Perhaps he is thinking about his own marriage because he seems to slump in his chair, even his hair seems muted. ‘I always thought she'd get married and have ten children. The old Catholic upbringing coming out.'

Ruth thinks of Shona's two abortions; the defiant declarations of independence before, the endless tears afterwards. ‘No,' she says, ‘no children.'

‘Poor Shona,' says Peter again. He sinks even further into his chair. It's going to take a rocket to shift him.

‘Peter,' says Ruth, lighting the touch paper, ‘did you want something? I ought to be getting on.'

He looks hurt. ‘Just to see how you were. I wondered if you'd like to go out for a drink tonight?'

Ruth thinks of going back to another girl's night in: Pinot Grigio, Liam, takeaway, mysterious text messages.

‘Ok,' she says. ‘That'd be nice.'

*

They go to a restaurant in King's Lynn, near the pub where Ruth had lunch with Nelson. This place, though, has pretensions: lower-case menu, blonde wood floors, square plates, banks of flickering candles. Chasing a lone scallop over acres of white china, Ruth says, ‘Where did you find this place?' Then she adds hastily, ‘It's great.'

‘Phil recommended it.' That figured.

It's early and there are only two other couples dining, two thirtysomethings who are clearly counting the minutes until they can be in bed together and an elderly couple who do not exchange one word all evening.

‘Blimey, why don't they get a room?' mutters Ruth as the thirtysomething woman starts licking wine off the man's fingers.

‘Probably married to other people.'

‘Why do you say that?'

‘If they were married to each other, they wouldn't be talking, let alone be performing sex acts on each other's fingers,' says Peter in a low voice. ‘Look at the old dears over there. Fifty years of wedded bliss and not a word to say to each other.'

Ruth wants to ask if this was what his marriage was like. Say nothing, she tells herself, and he'll come out with it. Peter was never very good at silences.

Sure enough, Peter sighs and takes a gulp of over-priced red wine. ‘Like me and Victoria. We just … drifted apart. I know it's a cliché but it's true. We just ran out of things to say to each other. Woke up one morning and discovered that, apart from Daniel, we had nothing in common. Oh we still like each other, it's all very friendly, but that something, that vital something, has gone.'

But that's what happened to us, Ruth wants to say. She remembers that feeling of looking at Peter – intelligent, kind, good-looking Peter – and thinking, ‘Is this it?' Is this what I have to settle for, a nice man who, when he touches me, I sometimes don't even notice?

But Peter has his rose-tinted spectacles on again. ‘With us, we had so much in common,' he says dreamily, ‘archaeology, history, books. Victoria's no intellectual. Her only serious reading matter is
Hello
magazine.'

‘That's very patronising,' says Ruth.

‘Oh, don't get me wrong,' says Peter hastily, ‘Victoria's a wonderful woman. Very warm and giving.' (She's put on weight, thinks Ruth). ‘I'm very fond of her and we're both devoted to Daniel but it's not a marriage any more. We're more like flatmates, sharing childcare and housework, only talking about who's picking up Daniel the next day or when the Tesco delivery is coming.'

‘Well, what did you expect to be talking about? Renaissance architecture? The early poems of Robert Browning?'

Peter grins. ‘Something like that. Well,
we
talked, didn't
we? Do you remember the nights around the campfire talking about whether Neolithic man was a hunter-gatherer or a farmer? You said that women would have done the hunting and you tried to creep up on that sheep to show how it could be done.'

‘And fell flat on my face in sheep crap,' says Ruth drily. She leans forward. It seems very important to make this clear to Peter. ‘Look Peter, the henge dig was ten years ago. That was then. This is now. We're different people. We had a relationship and that was great but it's in the past. You can't go back.'

‘Can't you?' asks Peter, looking at her very intently. In the candlelight his eyes are very dark, almost black.

‘No,' says Ruth gently.

Peter stares at her in silence for a minute or two, then he smiles. A different smile, sweeter and much sadder. ‘Well, let's just get pissed then,' he says, leaning forward to fill up her glass.

*

She doesn't get pissed but she's probably slightly over the limit when she gets into her car.

‘Drive carefully,' says Peter as he heads towards a new-looking Alfa Romeo. Mid-life crisis?

‘I will.' Ruth is glad that she doesn't have to negotiate the treacherous New Road with the darkness of the marsh all around. It's only a few minutes' drive to Shona's, she should be alright. She drives slowly, following other, more decisive, cars. On the radio, someone is talking about Gordon Brown. ‘He wants to go back to the way things were.' Don't we all, thinks Ruth, taking a left turn into Shona's road. Despite her tough words, she sympathises with Peter and
his yearning for the past. There is something very tempting about the idea of going back to Peter, accepting that the mysterious perfect man is not going to turn up, that Peter is the best that she is going to get, probably a lot better than she deserves. What's stopping her? Is it the shadowy Victoria and Daniel? Is it Nelson? She knows that nothing will come of the night with Nelson – it is just that imagining herself in bed with Peter seems comforting and familiar; it does not, for one minute, seem exciting.

She finds a space by the Indian restaurant and starts to walk towards Shona's house. Out of reflex, she checks her text messages. Just one:

I know where you are.

Scarlet Henderson's funeral takes place on a grim, rainy Friday afternoon. A line from a folk hymn comes into Ruth's head: ‘I danced on a Friday when the sky turned black.' The heavens are certainly weeping for Scarlet Henderson today; the rain falls relentlessly all morning.

‘It's bad luck to have a funeral on a Friday,' says Shona, looking out of her sitting-room window at the water cascading down the street.

‘For Christ's sake,' explodes Ruth. ‘When is it good luck to have a funeral?'

She shouldn't have snapped at Shona. She's only trying to be supportive, has even offered to come to the funeral with her, but Ruth says she should go alone. She feels somehow that she owes it to Scarlet, the little girl she knows only in death. Owes it too to Delilah and Alan. And to Nelson? Maybe. She hasn't spoken to him in days. Cathbad's release was on every newscast with Nelson, stony-faced, claiming to be following up new leads. Ruth suspects this is a lie, a suspicion shared, apparently, by most of the press.

The church, a squat modern building on the outskirts of Spenwell, is packed. Ruth finds a space at the back, wedged into the end of a pew. She can just see Nelson at the front of the church. He is wearing a dark grey suit and looking straight in front of him. He is flanked by other
burly figures who she thinks must be policemen. There is a policewoman too. Ruth sees her searching in her bag for a tissue and wonders if this is Judy, who helped break the news to Scarlet's parents.

The arrival of the tiny coffin, accompanied by a shell-shocked Delilah and Alan, the chrysanthemums spelling out the name ‘Scarlet', the siblings, cowed and wide-eyed in their dark clothes, the reedy singing of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful' – all seem designed to break your heart. Ruth feels the tears prickling at the back of her eyes but she does not let them fall. What right has she to cry over Scarlet?

The vicar, a nervous-looking man in white robes, makes a few anodyne remarks about angels and innocence and God's right hand. Then, to Ruth's surprise, Nelson steps forward to do a reading. He reads very badly, stumbling over the words, eyes downcast.

‘“I am the resurrection and the life”, says the Lord. “Those that believe in me even though they die, will live and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”'

Ruth is reminded uncomfortably of the letters. The writer of the Lucy Downey letters would love this, all his old favourites are here: life, death, the certainty of the afterlife and a comforting pall of mysticism thrown over the whole. Did Cathbad write those letters? And, if so, why? To frustrate the police? She knows that Cathbad dislikes the police – and archaeologists too, for that matter – but is that enough of a reason? Where is Cathbad today? Did he want to come, to comfort the woman he once loved, to comfort his daughter, Delilah's eldest, now weeping silently into her mother's hair?

At last it's over and the little white coffin passes so close that Ruth could almost touch it. She sees, again, that image of the arm hanging down, almost imagines that she can see it reaching out of the coffin, asking for her help. She shuts her eyes and the vision fades. The last hymn is playing, people are getting to their feet.

Outside, the rain has stopped and the air is cold and clammy. The coffin, followed by Scarlet's family, is driven away for a private cremation. The remaining mourners seem visibly to relax: talking, putting on coats, a couple of people lighting cigarettes.

Ruth finds herself next to the policewoman, who has a sweet, freckled face and eyes swollen with tears.

Ruth introduces herself and the policewoman's face lights up with recognition. ‘Oh, I know about you. The boss has talked about you. I'm Judy Johnson, Detective Constable Judy Johnson.'

‘You're the one who—' Ruth stops, not knowing if she should go on.

‘Who broke the news. Yes. I've had the training, you see, and they like a woman to go, especially if there's a child involved.'

‘Nelson … DCI Nelson, said you were very good.'

‘That's kind of him but I'm not sure how much anyone could do.'

They are silent for a moment, looking at the undertaker's cars lining the road outside. Nelson is getting into one of the cars. He doesn't look round.