The Outcast Dead (8 page)

‘Toast,’ says Kate, waving an imperious hand.

‘Please,’ says Ruth. She has been trying, without much success, to get Kate to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. Strange, when you think how easy it was to teach her the words to
Incy Wincy Spider
or even
Thunder Road
.

She gives Kate the toast and pours herself another cup of tea. She’d better get a move on. She needs to drop Kate at the childminder’s at eight and then get into the university for the meeting with the dreaded TV people. She imagines them incredibly cool and trendy, wearing
designer outfits and those little glasses that make everyone look clever. She peers at herself in the kettle. She’s wearing her normal work-day uniform of black trousers and loose white shirt. Her only concession to summer is leaving off her black jacket. Does she have any cool, trendy clothes? The newest item in her wardrobe is an all-weather cagoule for digging. She doubts if this counts.

‘More toast,’ says Kate, wiping her hands on Ruth’s sleeve.

Eventually she makes do with a red scarf wound round her neck. People like Shona are born knowing what to do with a scarf but Ruth is always left with too many loops.

‘Red, red, red,’ sings Kate softly. It’s her favourite colour. Ruth wonders what this says about her character. Ruth’s own preference is for cool green.

As they set out along the Saltmarsh road, Ruth slots in a nursery rhymes tape. Kate objects immediately. ‘Thunder Road,’ she demands.

‘Please,’ says Ruth automatically, but she is only too pleased to swap the wheels on the bus for Bruce and his car waiting by the screen doors, ready to scorch off across the black heart of America. She sings along as she drives. It’s a beautiful morning, the mist just rising from the sea, the sky high and clear.

Kate sings too. ‘Woo thunder road, woo-oo thunder road.’ They pass the roundabout and the caravan site and the boarded-up pub then take a turning inland. Ruth looks at the clock on the dashboard. Seven-fifty but that’s
five minutes slow so it’s … She drives between overhanging trees and takes the turn onto the Lynn Road.

What happens next seems almost dreamlike. One moment Ruth is driving along the familiar road, the next a car is heading straight for her. She can see the driver’s shocked face and hears Bruce singing about promises being broken. Even as Ruth brakes and swerves she thinks of Kate, sitting happily in the back seat. Oh God, don’t let Kate be harmed. If Ruth dies surely Nelson will look after Kate, and even if he insists on a Catholic school at least she’ll be safe with him and Michelle. All this passes through Ruth’s mind in the split second between pulling out onto the road and finding herself in the hedge.

‘Are you OK Kate?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ says Kate in a very small voice. Ruth looks round and her daughter smiles at her, almost as if she is reassuring her. Clarence Clemons is beginning a saxophone solo. After a few seconds Ruth becomes aware that someone is banging on her window. She tries to wind down the window, can’t find the handle and opens the door instead. She gets out, dimly aware that her legs are shaking.

A man is standing on the grass verge. His car, a black Lexus, is on the opposite side of the road. Ruth notices a dead rabbit in the gutter and hopes that it wasn’t an innocent victim of the crash.

‘Jesus Christ,’ the man is saying. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes,’ says Ruth and her voice sounds strange and dreamy. ‘Look at that rabbit.’

‘You need to sit down,’ says the man, ‘you must be
shocked. Look, it was all my fault. I was on the wrong side of the road.’

An indignant squawk from the back of the car rouses Ruth.

‘Kate,’ she says. ‘Coming darling.’

‘Oh God,’ says the man, ‘you’ve got a baby in there. Is she OK?’

Ruth opens the back door and lifts Kate out. She stands there, holding her daughter. .

‘Is the baby OK?’ says the man again.

‘I’m not a baby,’ says Kate scornfully.

‘Sorry, honey,’ says the man. ‘I can see you’re not. Are you all right, sweetheart?’

‘I’m nearly three,’ says Kate. ‘Not a baby.’ In fact, she’s just over two and a half but Ruth doesn’t correct her.

Ruth thinks she should put a stop to this conversation. ‘Shouldn’t we be exchanging numbers or something?’ she says.

‘Sure,’ says the man, getting a notebook from his pocket. ‘But, like I say, it’s all my fault. I thought I’d got used to driving on the left but I guess I lost concentration.’

Ruth notices for the first time that he has an American accent. He’s a tall man, powerfully built with thick grey hair. There’s something rather powerful about him too, even though he is apologising and promising to pay for the damage. Ruth thinks of a sheriff or an old-style New York cop. Maybe it’s just the way he drawls his rs.

‘Is your car damaged?’ says the man, handing Ruth a page from the notebook.

‘I don’t think so,’ says Ruth, scribbling. Her ancient Renault looks pretty battered but then it always looks like that. Nelson often mutters about her needing a new car. ‘Something safer for Katie.’ She won’t tell him about today’s adventure.

‘I think I swerved just in time,’ she says. ‘I must have driven right over to the other side of the road.’ As she says this, she realises that she doesn’t remember anything after swerving to avoid the Lexus.

‘But you might have whiplash,’ says the man. ‘I think you should see a doctor.’

Whiplash always sounds dodgy to Ruth. ‘I’m OK,’ she says.

They exchange addresses and Ruth puts Kate back into the car.

‘Look,’ says the man. ‘I’m not sure you should drive. You’ve had one hell of a shock.’

‘I’m OK,’ says Ruth again. ‘And I’ve got to go. Got to drop my daughter off and I’m late for work.’ She gives him a bland, social smile. ‘Goodbye.’ She has to stop herself from adding ‘nice to meet you’.

She starts up the car and bumps over the verge, back onto the road. In the mirror she can see the American standing by the hedge, gazing after her.

*

She doesn’t tell Sandra about the crash as she doesn’t want to get into the whole ‘are you all right, have a cup of tea, are you sure you haven’t got whiplash’ thing. Kate seems unconcerned and that’s all that matters. Besides,
now Ruth really is late. The TV people are coming at nine and she’d wanted to have half an hour to prepare herself but it’s now eight forty-five. So she gives Kate a quick kiss, says goodbye to Sandra and dives back into her car.

She feels fine until she gets to the university. Then, as she’s parking outside the Natural Sciences block, she sees her hands shaking on the wheel. She turns off the ignition and notices, with a kind of detached interest, that now her whole body is shivering. For God’s sake Ruth, she says to her reflection in the driving mirror, pull yourself together. You’ve got to impress Phil’s TV mates. She attempts a professional-looking smile but realises that she’s grinning like a loon. And now she can’t stop smiling. It’s as if she’s had four cups of espresso, a totally spaced-out feeling, not unpleasant in a way, but not terribly helpful today of all days.

She manages to stop smiling and shaking as she climbs the stairs. Calm, she tells herself, calm and professional. Oh God, where’s her scarf, her cool TV scarf? She feels at her neck. She must have left it in the car or even at the side of the road where she had the accident. Never mind, you don’t need a scarf to look like a good archaeologist. She pushes open the door to Phil’s office.

The room seems to be full of people. Dimly, as if looking through water, Ruth sees Phil, a woman in jeans and a tall, grey-haired man.

Phil is doing the introductions. ‘And this is Frank Barker, the celebrated historian,’ he is saying. ‘Poor
Frank’s a bit shaken up. He had a shunt on the way here. Some woman driver.’

And Ruth realises that Frank is holding her red scarf, like the favour of some fallen knight.

Ruth stands frozen to the spot. ‘You,’ she says at last.

The man, Frank Barker, is looking equally stunned. He glances down at the scarf and then back to Ruth as if wondering how the two came to be in the same room.

‘My God,’ he says. ‘It was you …’

Phil, who has been looking rather put-out (he doesn’t approve of tension unless he is the cause of it), says suddenly, ‘Oh I see! Ruth – you were the woman driver. That’s priceless.’

‘It was entirely my fault,’ says Frank.

‘Sue him, Ruth,’ says the woman, who has remained seated, her face impassive. ‘Sue him for every penny he’s got.’

‘It’s no big deal,’ says Ruth, sitting down at the conference table. ‘I’m sorry I’m late.’

‘You had to drop your daughter off,’ says Frank. ‘How is she?’

‘Fine,’ says Ruth shortly. She doesn’t like the way that Phil is still chuckling and the woman (what was her name? Danielle something) is still staring at her.

‘Here,’ Frank pulls out a chair. ‘Sit down. I’ll get you some coffee.’ Ruth sees a cafetiere and real china cups laid out on a tray. Phil must have brought them from home. The university only runs to plastic cups from a vending machine. There are biscuits too.

‘Are you sure you haven’t got whiplash?’ says Phil. ‘You can make a mint out of whiplash claims.’

‘Just another way for lawyers to get rich,’ says the woman, leaning forward to fill up her cup.

‘I haven’t got whiplash,’ says Ruth, through gritted teeth. ‘I’m fine. It’s no big deal. Shall we get on with the meeting?’

‘Good idea,’ says Phil. ‘Now that the two experts have bumped into each other, ha ha.’

Ruth is pleased to see that no-one else laughs. The woman, who turns out to be the producer, hands out glossy information packs showing a shadowy figure of a woman brandishing a knife.

‘This is the franchise,’ she says briskly. Her voice is an odd mixture of transatlantic drawl and upper-class English. ‘
Women Who Kill
is a series about notorious woman murderers. It tends to be a bit sensationalist. Corinna Lewis presents it and she’s not exactly one for subtlety, but I’ve been called in to do this one and I want it to be a bit different, more accurate historically. That’s why I want to involve Frank here.’

‘So not too many close-ups of the famous hook,’ laughs Phil. ‘No screams in the night.’

‘No,’ says the woman, deadpan. ‘None of that. The thing is, we’ve got a different angle.’

‘What Dani is saying,’ Frank leans forward, ‘is that we’ve got some pretty compelling evidence that Jemima Green may have been innocent.’

‘Mother Hook innocent?’ exclaims Phil. ‘You’re kidding! What about all that
Don’t cry little darling
stuff?’

‘A myth has grown up around her,’ says Frank, ‘but that’s all it is. There was never really any evidence against her.’

‘I thought she killed all those children and gave their bodies to the grave robbers?’

‘She obviously knew the Resurrection Men,’ says Frank, and Ruth thinks that he’s choosing his words carefully, ‘but there’s no evidence of any murders. Some of her charges did die but then infant mortality was high.’

‘She was convicted of one murder,’ says Dani. ‘Joshua Barnet, the child of a single mother, died in Jemima’s care. The mother, Anna Barnet, accused Jemima of murder and the court believed her.’

‘She couldn’t produce the body,’ said Frank. ‘That counted against her.’

I bet it did, thinks Ruth. Aloud she says, ‘So this programme is going to be an exoneration of Jemima Green?’

Dani and Frank exchange glances. ‘It’s not quite that simple,’ says Dani at last. Ruth finds the producer rather intimidating. She’s a small woman with close-cropped
black hair and precise bird-like movements, who gives the impression of knowing exactly what she’s doing. Phil is completely mesmerised.

‘Frank has his theories,’ Dani is saying, ‘but we’ve no evidence one way or another. The trouble is that the producers are wanting to make a very different sort of programme – this hook-handed monster, this evil woman. You know the sort of thing.’

Phil, who has been saying this sort of thing ever since they found the bones, says, in a shocked voice, ‘God, I hate all that sensationalism.’

‘Me too, Phil,’ says Dani. Phil looks smug. ‘But we’ll have to put a bit in because that’s what this series is all about. What I hope is that Frank – and Ruth here – can balance it with some hard-headed fact.’

‘If there’s anything about the bones themselves,’ says Frank, looking at Ruth, ‘that gives us a more rounded view of Jemima, that would be a real boost.’

Ruth notices that Frank, like so many other academics before him, is now on first-name terms with his subject. She also sees that Phil is dying to be included amongst the hard-headed experts.

‘Bones can tell us a certain amount,’ she says cautiously. ‘Age, health, diet, that sort of thing. Generally speaking, bones can’t always tell you how someone died but they can tell you how someone lived.’

Phil looks rather irritated. ‘Bones can tell us a bit more than that, Ruth. Tell them about the case up in Lancashire.’

‘No,’ Dani interrupts him. ‘That’s just the sort of thing that we’d like to hear Ruth say on camera. There’s too much guesswork in documentaries these days.’

‘We could get a facial reconstruction,’ says Phil. ‘They’re always good. Pricey though, but if the TV company’s paying …’

Dani grimaces slightly. ‘We haven’t got a massive budget, I’m afraid. Anyway, that’s the sort of thing I want to avoid. I’d rather hear a few sober facts from Ruth.’

Ruth tries to look suitably sober. She can sense Phil’s frustration from across the table. He had been so sure that his particular brand of charm would be perfect for TV but it turns out that they’re looking for dull professionalism instead.

‘I’d love to have a look at the place where you found the bones,’ says Frank. ‘Is that possible?’

‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘I’ll take you, if you like. It’s about an hour’s drive away.’

‘We can go in my car if it’s easier,’ says Frank.

‘No thanks,’ says Ruth. ‘I’d rather get there in one piece.’

*

‘Jesus, when you came into the room I thought you’d come to arrest me.’

‘I thought I was seeing things. And when you held up my scarf …’

Ruth is cutting her way through the mid-morning traffic. Frank sits beside her, completely relaxed, long legs folded into the tiny car. It’s funny, thinks Ruth, it’s as if
they’ve skipped several stages in the getting-to-know-you process (a process which, for Ruth, can take several years). Now she finds herself laughing with Frank about their first meeting, even teasing him gently when she asks how an American has ended up as an expert on Victorian murderesses.