The Ghost Fields (Ruth Galloway) (32 page)

Nelson asks the taxi driver to go past Patrick’s house. It’s off the Sydenham Bypass, a pleasant Victorian villa with a monkey puzzle tree in the garden. According to Alice, it’s where Patrick had lived with his parents. What made a man who still lived in his childhood home suddenly decide to travel to another country to attend the funeral of an uncle he had never met? Nelson has to concede that he will never know.

‘Grand little property,’ says the driver. ‘Thinking of moving to Belfast?’

‘No,’ says Nelson. ‘I’m not moving anywhere.’

Tim and Judy are doing research of their own. Nelson told them to investigate Cassandra Blackstock and that’s just what they are doing. This is made easier by the fact that she’s on Facebook, where she is apparently ‘in a relationship with Dave Clough’.

‘That was quick,’ says Tim, looking over Judy’s shoulder. ‘Does his profile say he’s in a relationship?’

‘No, but he doesn’t go on Facebook much. It’s mostly pictures of his Sunday football team.’

From Facebook, though, they learn that Cassandra studied English and Drama at Bristol University, that she has an impressive number of friends (over three hundred) and a propensity for going to parties dressed as Marlene Dietrich. A Google search yields an Equity profile and even a Wikipedia entry, which sounds as if it was written by Cassandra herself: ‘This talented actress . . .’

Tim stares at a picture of Cassandra dressed as a badger in a community-theatre production of
The Wind in the Willows
. She even looks sexy with a black-and-white striped face.

‘You should go and see her,’ he tells Judy. ‘Find out if she’s got anything to hide.’

‘Do you think she has then?’

‘I don’t know, but I think she’d have more trouble hiding it from another woman.’

Cassandra is still staying at Blackstock Hall. She takes Judy up to her room ‘so they can talk in peace’.

‘It’s great being back at home,’ she says, arranging herself elegantly on the single bed. ‘But it’s impossible to have any time to yourself. Mum keeps asking me if I’m all right, if I want a cup of tea. It’s driving me mad.’

It doesn’t seem too bad to Judy, having someone fussing over you and offering you tea. Cathbad adores her but he’s more likely to build her a ceremonial fire than put the kettle on. Her own mother is a school secretary with a busy social life and Judy hasn’t lived at home since she was eighteen. She eases herself into the only available chair, a flimsy white affair with a gingham cushion, and looks around.

This is clearly Cassandra’s childhood room. The bed has a pink duvet and countless fluffy cushions. On the walls, ponies fight for space with heavy metal bands and Tolkien illustrations. Judy wonders why the room hasn’t been redecorated. After all, Cassandra must be nearly thirty. She also thinks that if Cassandra likes fantasy and heavy metal, she really is Clough’s ideal woman.

‘This room was too small to get the B & B treatment,’ says Cassandra, correctly interpreting Judy’s glance. ‘Unlike Chaz’s, which has had a total makeover.’

She laughs but Judy thinks that Cassandra likes the idea of having this room to escape to, a place where she can be a child again. And wouldn’t we all like that, given the chance?

‘I was just wondering if you’d remembered anything else about the evening of October twenty-seventh, when you were attacked in the grounds here,’ says Judy. ‘Sometimes people do remember things some time after the event, when the shock has worn off.’

Cassandra flicks back her hair and assumes a remembering pose. Or maybe she is remembering. The trouble with Cassandra is that she always looks so theatrical. Even now, curled up on the bed in her grey jumper and black leggings, she looks like a prima ballerina on her day off.

‘I remember looking at my text messages,’ says Cassandra. ‘And then someone hitting me over the head. That’s all really.’

‘Did you hear them coming up behind you?’ asks Judy. ‘Footsteps? Breathing?’

‘No,’ says Cassandra. ‘I didn’t hear anything. I was so absorbed in my message.’

‘Who was it from?’ asks Judy. She wonders if anyone has asked this before.

‘A friend,’ says Cassandra. Judy waits. Cassandra twists her hair. ‘I’d had a message from my agent, Tobias, earlier,’ she says, ‘and I thought it was him again. But it was from a friend. Georgie.’

‘Boy Georgie or girl Georgie?’

‘Boy.’

‘Boyfriend?’

‘No.’ More hair-twisting. ‘I’ve sometimes thought he wanted to be more but, no, he’s just a friend.’

‘And what was the message about?’

‘Just asking where I was, that sort of thing. Wondering when he was going to see me.’

Judy thinks that Cassandra is lying but what can she do? She’s not a suspect or even a person of interest in the enquiry. She’s wondering what she can ask next when Cassandra says, ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Dave talks about you a lot.’

‘He does?’

‘Yes. You’re very close, aren’t you? I was quite jealous at first but Dave told me that there would never be anything like that between you. You’re just mates, he says.’

‘That’s nice of him.’

‘Yes, isn’t it? He says that you’re really close because you’ve been through so much together. You, Dave and Nelson.’

‘That’s true, I suppose.’

‘It’s almost like you’re a family. Nelson’s the father and you and Dave are brother and sister.’

Much as Judy hates to admit it, there is some truth in this. Why else have she and Clough fought for Nelson’s attention all these years? Why else does she feel so close to Clough? She has nothing in common with him, sometimes she doesn’t even like him, but there are times when she feels closer to him than to anyone in the world.

Aloud she says, ‘We’re colleagues, that’s all.’

‘I envy you.’ Cassandra’s eyes have a misty look. Is she imagining herself as a policeman’s wife? ‘Dave can’t wait to get back to work. I bet he’ll be back as soon as the doctors give him the go-ahead.’

CHAPTER 30

But the doctors don’t give Clough the go-ahead for another three weeks. He is due to resume work on Monday the ninth of December. Judy is going on maternity leave on the sixth, which is also the date of the Blackstocks’ ‘wrap party’ celebrating the end of the filming. Judy seems increasingly twitchy as this date approaches. Maybe it’s because Clough is coming back just when she’s leaving, maybe it’s because Tanya is showing signs of enjoying her Acting DS status too much (‘Don’t worry Judy,’ she told her colleague, ‘I’ll look after the boys when you’re away’). Either way, Judy is so bad-tempered during her last few days at work that Nelson and Tim often hide in the gents when they hear her coming.

Nelson is fed up too. He’s almost certain that Patrick Blackstock was killed by a member of his estranged family, but with no evidence, there is no way he can prove it. Similarly, it seems that the death of Flying Officer Frederick Blackstock will for ever remain a mystery. But Nelson is sure that the answer has something to do with Blackstock Hall, that it lies buried deep in the family grave, or at least in the pets’ burial ground. But, again, with limited resources and no new evidence, there is nothing he can do.

Even the investigation into the attack on Clough is moving slowly. There don’t seem to be any witnesses. The DNA found on the mask doesn’t match any held on the register and, although he’s asked for further tests, the results haven’t come back yet. The attack on Cassandra is even less likely to be solved. Once again there are no witnesses and there is a general feeling that Cassandra might even have imagined the assault. As Whitcliffe put it to Nelson in one of their weekly meetings: ‘A highly strung girl, an actress, probably in an extremely emotional state, just come from a funeral, been drinking, a howling gale. Put those together and what have you got?’ Nelson doesn’t bother answering the question. For his own part, he believes that someone did creep up behind Cassie while she stood amongst the family tombstones, someone who was willing to take any chance to do away with the Blackstock heir. But what are his policeman’s instincts against Whitcliffe’s all-too-rational version of events? Again, it’s not worth answering.

To add to Nelson’s woes, he is booked to go on a training course from the sixth to the eighth of December. The course, ‘Community Engagement in Twenty-first-century Policing’, is, of course, Whitcliffe’s idea. ‘You’ll enjoy it, Harry,’ he said, passing him the application form which he had already counter-signed. ‘You never know, you might even join the twenty-first century.’ Then, seeing Nelson’s face, ‘It’s in York, a lovely city. Why don’t you take Michelle and make a mini-break of it?’ It’s a measure of Nelson’s desperation that he did suggest this idea to Michelle. She hadn’t been keen. ‘I’m really busy at work in December, and what’ll I do in York all day when you’re on the course?’ ‘There’s a cathedral,’ said Nelson but he hadn’t pressed the point. Michelle isn’t really one for old buildings.

Now, as Nelson packs his overnight bag, he reflects that Michelle hasn’t been herself recently. She normally loves the build-up to Christmas: buying presents, ordering the turkey, getting the tree down from the loft, forcing him to go to parties. But this year she has seemed lethargic and uninterested. Maybe it’s the weather, which is still stormy and grey with an unrelenting icy wind. Maybe it’s because Laura is staying in Ibiza for Christmas with her new boyfriend. He’ll have to do something to cheer Michelle up. Go to a show in London, perhaps. She’d like that. As long as it’s not a musical. There are limits to being a good husband.

At least the course means that he’ll avoid the party at Blackstock Hall. The Blackstocks are the very last people he wants to see, except perhaps the American film crew. He has heard rumours that Ruth is now very friendly with Frank Barker. Well, that’s OK (he supposes) as long as he doesn’t have to see them together. He has ordered Judy to go to the party though. Someone has to keep their eye on the Blackstocks and, as Judy is off on maternity leave next week, it’ll be a nice treat for her.

You’re all heart, he tells himself.

Ruth is not looking forward to the party either. It’ll be the first time that she and Frank will be seen together as a couple. They have seen each other most nights since the boeuf bourguignon evening. Ruth doesn’t stop to think about the wisdom of this. She doesn’t ask herself what will happen when Frank goes back to America. She just lets herself be carried along by the tide.

But the tide is one thing, the party is another. She wants to look her best, glamorous even. She has to buy something nice to wear and, if possible, lose about two stone. So Ruth is at the gym. She has actually been a member there for ten years. When the receptionist made her a new card (everything has been automated since Ruth’s last visit), she commented that Ruth was one of their oldest members. She didn’t add that Ruth has visited the gym only twice in those ten years, which averages out, Ruth calculates, at about a thousand pounds a swim.

But now she’s determined to do it properly. She has had an induction with a charming young man called Dean and, for the last month, has been to the sports club three times a week. She spends half an hour in the gym, following the programme designed for her by Dean, and then she swims for half an hour. She hates it. She hates the other members in their designer sportswear, running marathons on the treadmill, then stopping to do complicated stretches, carrying their little bottles of water everywhere. She hates the changing rooms where the women strip off and then wander around naked chatting about their Pilates sessions. She even hates the pool, which is too warm and emits a stinging smell of chlorine. It’ll be worth it if she gets fit but, so far, she has only lost one pound. It doesn’t help that the only place in the club that she likes is the cafe, which sells delicious Danish pastries.

But today Ruth is determined. The party is tomorrow. Surely it’s not too late to change her body shape completely? She slogs away on the cross-trainer, ignoring the flashing lights informing her that she has so far burnt one hundred calories, approximately a third of a Mars bar. It is so boring, that’s the problem. Everyone else has iPods to plug in but Ruth is stubbornly old fashioned and prefers her transistor radio. There’s a television but it’s too far away and, besides, at this hour it always shows a breakfast TV programme of breath-taking vacuousness. Ruth is reduced to looking out of the window, but the view is pretty boring too. Just the car park, a few trees and a recycling station. She watches as a man and a woman walk out to their car. The woman has long blonde hair and, even from the back, has the sort of figure that makes Ruth feel envious. The man is tall and athletic, carrying his sports bag high on his shoulder. At the car, they stop and kiss. Maybe they aren’t a couple then. Maybe they are illicit lovers who just meet at the gym. There’s certainly something going on, judging by the length and passion of the kiss. Then the woman puts her bag in the boot and turns to say something to the man. He reaches out and touches her cheek. Ruth stops. The cross-trainer bleeps at her angrily but she ignores it. The man turns and heads off towards his own car. For a moment he is staring directly at Ruth but can’t see her because of the tinted glass. She recognises him though. It’s Tim.