The Woman In Blue: The Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries 8 (16 page)

‘I’m Lauren, Chloe’s sister. This is my boyfriend, Jake.’

So it’s not Thom Novak. Where is Chloe’s mysterious boyfriend today?

‘You spoke really well,’ says Tim. ‘That must have been difficult to do.’

‘I thought someone from the family should say something,’ says Lauren. ‘Mum and Dad couldn’t have managed it.’

‘How are they doing?’ asks Tim.

‘All right. Mum threw herself into arranging the funeral. I think it will hit her afterwards. Dad’s been in pieces, though. I’ve never seen him cry before, but now he can’t stop.’

It’s terrible when a man like Alan Jenkins finally gives in to grief. Tim has seen it before. He asks if the family are getting counselling.

‘Mum and Dad have seen someone. Mum said she was really good.’

‘Maybe you should see her too,’ suggests Tim gently.

‘That’s what I said,’ says Jake.

‘Maybe.’ Lauren twists a strand of hair in a way that reminds him agonisingly of Michelle. ‘Can I ask you something, Sergeant Heathfield?’

‘Do call me Tim. Yes, of course.’

‘Those people that were here from the Sanctuary. The old man. Someone told me that he was a suspect.’

There’s no sign of Fiona, Stanley and Jean at the wake. They must have driven straight back to Norfolk. A good move, thinks Tim. He wonders who could have told Lauren that Stanley is a suspect.

‘We’ve interviewed Mr Greenway,’ he says carefully. ‘But no charges have been brought.’

‘If you’ve interviewed him,’ says Lauren, ‘then he must be a suspect.’

‘I can’t really say,’ says Tim. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I suspect him,’ says Jake. ‘He looks the type.’

That’s the trouble, thinks Tim. Stanley Greenway
does
look the type. The trouble is that there isn’t really a type. Tim has met charming, respectable murderers, people who wouldn’t look out of place at a Surrey golf club. It would help a lot if they were all seedy-looking loners.

As soon as he can, he asks about Thom Novak.

‘Oh, Thom,’ says Lauren, sounding half-affectionate, half exasperated. ‘Goodness knows where he is.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, he checked out of the clinic in Switzerland two days ago. No one has any idea where he is now.’

*

Ruth knows that something is up as soon as she gets to the Archaeology department corridor. As she stands by her door, trying to dig her keycard out of her organiser handbag, Zita, the department secretary, pokes her head out from Phil’s office.

‘Here she is.’

Phil himself emerges. ‘Ah Ruth, there you are.’ As usual, he makes Ruth feel as if she’s late, although, as she has no lectures or tutorials that morning, her time is her own.

‘Hi, Phil.’

‘Ruth, there was a man asking for you.’

His words take Ruth back to another day. The day, almost seven years ago, when she arrived at work to find a strange man waiting for her. Nelson, wanting her help in dating bones found on the Saltmarsh. She realises that Phil is still talking to her.

‘A man?’ she repeats.

‘No, not a man,’ says Zita, appearing at Phil’s side. ‘A priest.’

‘He’s waiting in the canteen,’ says Phil.

As Ruth only knows one priest (one male priest, that is) she’s not that surprised to find Father Hennessey waiting for her at one of the long tables, a cappuccino in front of him.

‘Hallo, Ruth. Sorry to call in on you like this.’

‘That’s OK.’

‘Are you going to get yourself a drink? This coffee’s really very good. It’s truly terrible, the stuff they serve at the police station.’

‘I know.’ Ruth has had her own experience of Nelson’s coffee. She often wonders if it’s a way of torturing suspects until they confess. In contrast, the coffee at the university is excellent. Ruth gets herself an espresso. She thinks that she might need the energy. She has a feeling that, like the visit from Nelson all those years ago, this conversation is going to complicate her life.

They sit opposite each other. It’s nearly lunchtime and the canteen is filling up, but the undergraduates give them a wide berth. Perhaps it’s the clerical collar.

‘Ruth, I’ve just been to see Nelson.’

‘Oh?’ That’s the best she can do.

‘I had a story to tell him and I’d like, if I may, to tell the same story to you.’

He tells her about Glasgow, the tenements, the deathbed confession, Fiona McAllister. Ruth listens in silence.

‘Last night, after I left the Sanctuary, I walked back to Walsingham. I think you saw me outside St Simeon’s. I recognised your car going past.’

‘Yes. I was dropping off my friend Hilary.’

‘I heard what happened to that poor girl. I’m so sorry.’

‘She wasn’t a girl,’ says Ruth, suddenly irritated. ‘She was a woman. And a priest.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘Why did you come here and tell me all this?’

‘I thought that seeing me might have raised some questions in your mind. I wanted to tell you the truth.’

‘What if I tell other people?’

‘You won’t, I’m sure. Besides I’m going to make a clean breast of it to my bishop. That’s one of the things I have decided on this trip.’

‘I won’t tell anyone.’

‘Thank you, Ruth.’

Ruth looks at the priest, one of the few people she had believed to be genuinely good and incorruptible. He looks the same: grey hair, broken nose, bright blue eyes. Who knows what secrets people are hiding? The thought makes her feel afraid, as if the brightly lit canteen has been suddenly plunged into darkness.

‘It’s been a strange time,’ says Father Hennessey, stirring the remains of his coffee. ‘It’s been wonderful to get to know Fiona, but such terrible things have happened. Fiona was so upset about that young girl . . . woman . . . Chloe. And now this other death. Places like Walsingham can be dangerous.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Pilgrimages can be very fulfilling, spiritually fulfilling, I mean. This trip has been a pilgrimage for me too. But, by their very nature, pilgrimages make people think about the past. And that can be dangerous.’

‘Don’t people go on pilgrimage to ask for forgiveness?’

‘That’s true. But forgiveness is a powerful thing.’

After Father Hennessey has gone, sweeping through the undergraduates like Gandalf on a visit to Hobbiton, Ruth wonders whether that was what the priest was doing today. Asking forgiveness, or at least understanding, from her and Nelson. Why he should want her forgiveness she doesn’t know, but she gives it anyway. Fathering a child doesn’t seem like such a terrible sin. She wonders what Nelson thought and whether he made his own confession in return. He was raised a Catholic, after all.

‘Hallo, Ruth.’

She’s not really surprised to see Phil and Shona bearing down on her. Phil always wants to know everything that happens in the department and it’s not every day that one of his colleagues gets a visit from a priest complete with dog collar.

‘So,’ he says as soon as he sits down, ‘who was the mysterious visitor?’

Ruth considers telling Phil that Father Hennessey is a long-lost uncle/serial killer/emissary from the Pope. Instead she says, ‘I got to know him when we excavated that house in Norwich a few years ago. You remember, the one with the skeleton under the door. The foundation sacrifice.’

‘I remember,’ says Phil, losing interest slightly.

‘Gosh, Ruth,’ says Shona, ‘you do live, don’t you?’

Ruth agrees that she does. Shona starts to eat her salad and Ruth feels her mouth watering (though not for salad). She usually tries to avoid eating in front of Phil because he always has to make some comment about her menu choice. ‘You do love your carbs, don’t you, Ruth?’

There is something she wants to ask him, though.

‘I was at the museum today,’ she says, ‘going through the Walsingham finds.’

‘Oh, is this for your friend’s dig?’

Ruth has almost forgotten the lie she told Phil at the start of Hilary’s visit.

‘Er, yes,’ she says. ‘Sort of. I wanted to ask you something. You know about old glass, don’t you?’

‘It’s one of my areas of expertise,’ says Phil modestly.

In fact Phil has a few of these rather dull specialisms. Ruth often suspects it’s a way of getting maximum media attention. Looking for an expert in eighteenth-century lustreware? Phil Trent is your man. Even now he has his TV face on, head on one side, eyes crinkling encouragingly. Ruth shows him a copy of the print-out from the museum.

‘This piece of glass. Could it be important, do you think? It’s quite early for glassware in Britain, isn’t it?’

‘Not really. You sometimes get glass beads in Anglo-Saxon funerary contexts and glass was fairly common in the Roman era. Glass goblets have been found in Viking graves too. Post Roman occupation, glass-making went into decline, but it was still manufactured in monasteries using wood furnaces. They were banned eventually, because the process used too much timber. Then you get a post-medieval boom when they started using coal furnaces.’

‘So this could be a rare piece?’

Phil shrugs. ‘It could be Venetian. You got a lot of Venetian glassmakers coming over in the Middle Ages. Hard to tell without looking at it. But this sort of find is fairly common. The monks would have had glassware, or it could be from an apothecary or used to carry holy oil and what have you. Why are you asking?’

‘I was looking through the Walsingham finds at the museum today. This one is missing.’

Phil shrugs again and takes a piece of cucumber from Shona’s salad bowl. ‘Things go missing all the time.’

‘Not at the museum. They’re very organised.’

‘Why are you so interested? Is this to do with the police?’

‘Oh no,’ says Ruth. ‘I was just curious, that’s all.’

‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ says Phil. A singularly tactless thing to say to Ruth.

*

Apart from police tape over the entrance to the abbey, there’s little sign that Walsingham has been the scene of a violent crime only forty-odd hours ago. The shops are still selling vestments and holy pictures; groups of pilgrims are still wandering up and down the high street taking pictures of the pump-house and the pub. Ruth sees a woman priest dressed in purple like a bishop, and a man with a long beard who looks like a Greek Patriarch. She also sees Clough sitting in his car outside St Simeon’s Church eating a Crunchie bar. The car is unmarked, and Clough isn’t in uniform so maybe he’s undercover. Ruth is just wondering whether to approach when Clough leans out of the window and shouts, ‘Hi, Ruth!’ So much for the Secret Service.

‘Hi, Dave.’ Ruth crosses the road to talk to him. She’s known Clough for years, one way and another, and is rather surprised how fond she is of him.

‘Bad business, isn’t it?’ says Clough, nodding towards the church with the abbey behind it.

‘Awful.’

‘The boss said you knew her, the woman who died.’

‘I didn’t really know her, but I went out to dinner with her once. She was very nice.’

‘That’s what everyone says. Good-looking too.’

Ruth reflects that the death of someone attractive (Chloe Jenkins, Paula Moncrieff) is always considered borderline more tragic than the death of someone aesthetically displeasing. But there’s no point saying this to Clough.

‘Did you hear that Michelle was attacked too?’ Clough is saying. ‘Must have been the same bloke. She had a lucky escape.’

‘I did hear, yes.’

‘Lucky Tim and the boss were close by. Did you know that Tim has applied for a transfer?’

Ruth thinks it’s best to pretend that she doesn’t know this. She expresses surprise.

‘Everyone’s deserting me.’ Clough sounds really aggrieved. ‘First Judy, now Tim.’

‘Judy’ll be back.’

‘So she says.’ Clough’s voice is gloomy. ‘She’ll probably bring the baby with her and insist on breastfeeding all over the office.’

That’s the thing about Clough, thinks Ruth, as she says goodbye and follows the signs to the Anglican shrine. Just when he’s being human, he says something that reminds you what a Neanderthal he can be. Except that the Neanderthals probably had a more enlightened attitude towards breastfeeding.

The Anglican shrine is round the corner from The Bull. Ruth almost walks straight past it because the front is modern and glass, with automatic doors. When she passes through the doors (which make a sinister swooshing sound) she finds herself in a rather charming garden. Brick paths take slow serpentine routes through the spring flowers and, apart from the occasional visitor sitting quietly on benches, the place is deserted. Along the path there are brick pillars inlaid with brightly coloured frescoes. Ruth peers at one, ‘Jesus falls for the second time.’ What are these called? Stations of the Cross, something like that. Underneath is a small sign saying ‘Mother Mary, Pray For Us’. Ruth hurries on.

Hilary had said that she would meet her in the cafe, but instead Ruth finds her sitting on a bench near an outdoor altar covered with a sort of sail. They embrace awkwardly.

‘I thought I’d wait for you here,’ says Hilary. ‘I couldn’t cope with the cafe somehow.’

‘It’s nice here,’ says Ruth, sitting beside Hilary on the bench. ‘Peaceful.’

‘Yes,’ says Hilary. ‘I really felt that I needed some time here before I left.’

‘I’m so sorry about Paula,’ says Ruth.

‘It’s horrible.’ Hilary looks like she hasn’t slept. Her hair is lank and her eyes deeply shadowed. Ruth remembers Hilary at the dinner on Wednesday night, sleek and attractive in her black top. She thinks of Paula too and feels again the shock at the finality of death. Two days ago Paula was sitting in the Briarfields bar, funny and animated, talking about her acting career, and now she isn’t anywhere. She has gone. Completely, irrevocably. Except that Hilary, presumably, thinks that she’s in heaven. Sometimes Ruth thinks that she’d do anything to share this belief.

‘Her husband came to identify her body,’ says Hilary. ‘I thought he might come to St Catherine’s, but he didn’t.’

Ruth thinks that Paula’s husband probably doesn’t want to come within a million miles of Walsingham. What was it that Father Hennessey said? Places like Walsingham can be dangerous.

‘The last two days have been terrible,’ says Hilary. ‘The police interviewing us, everyone crying. You’d think a group of priests would be able to cope better, that we’d be able to pray, to comfort each other, but everyone just seems stunned.’