Ruth Galloway (2 page)

She eats her toast and drinks her tea (she prefers coffee but is saving herself for a proper espresso at the university). As she does so, she leafs through her lecture notes, originally typewritten but now scribbled over with a palimpsest of additional notes in different coloured pens. ‘Gender and
Prehistoric Technology', ‘Excavating Artefacts', ‘Life and Death in the Mesolithic', ‘The Role of Animal Bone in Excavations'. Although it is only early November, the Christmas term will soon be over and this will be her last week of lectures. Briefly, she conjures up the faces of her students: earnest, hard-working, slightly dull. She only teaches postgraduates these days and rather misses the casual, hungover good humour of the undergraduates. Her students are so
keen
, waylaying her after lectures to talk about Lindow Man and Boxgrove Man and whether women really would have played a significant role in prehistoric society. Look around you, she wants to shout, we don't always play a significant role in
this
society. Why do you think a gang of grunting hunter-gatherers would have been any more enlightened than we?

Thought for the Day
seeps into her unconscious, reminding her that it is time to leave. ‘In some ways, God is like an iPod …' She puts her plate and cup in the sink and leaves down food for her cats, Sparky and Flint. As she does so, she answers the ever-present sardonic interviewer in her head. ‘OK, I'm a single, overweight woman on my own and I have cats. What's the big deal? And, OK, sometimes I do speak to them but I don't imagine that they answer back and I don't pretend that I'm any more to them than a convenient food dispenser.' Right on cue, Flint, a large ginger Tom, squeezes himself through the cat flap and fixes her with an unblinking, golden stare.

‘Does God feature on our Recently Played list or do we sometimes have to press Shuffle?'

Ruth strokes Flint and goes back into the sitting room to
put her papers into her rucksack. She winds a red scarf (her only concession to colour: even fat people can buy scarves) round her neck and puts on her anorak. Then she turns out the lights and leaves the cottage.

Ruth's cottage is one in a line of three on the edge of the Saltmarsh. One is occupied by the warden of the bird sanctuary, the other by weekenders who come down in summer, have lots of toxic barbecues and park their 4 × 4 in front of Ruth's view. The road is frequently flooded in spring and autumn and often impassable by midwinter. ‘Why don't you live somewhere more convenient?' her colleagues ask. ‘There are some lovely properties in King's Lynn, or even Blakeney if you want to be near to nature.' Ruth can't explain, even to herself, how a girl born and brought up in South London can feel such a pull to these inhospitable marshlands, these desolate mudflats, this lonely, unrelenting view. It was research that first brought her to the Saltmarsh but she doesn't know herself what it is that makes her stay, in the face of so much opposition. ‘I'm used to it,' is all she says. ‘Anyway the cats would hate to move.' And they laugh. Good old Ruth, devoted to her cats, child-substitutes of course, shame she never got married, she's really very pretty when she smiles.

Today, though, the road is clear, with only the ever-present wind blowing a thin line of salt onto her windscreen. She squirts water without noticing it, bumps slowly over the cattle grid and negotiates the twisting road that leads to the village. In summer the trees meet overhead, making this a mysterious green tunnel. But today the trees are mere skeletons, their bare arms stretching up to
the sky. Ruth, driving slightly faster than is prudent, passes the four houses and boarded-up pub that constitute the village and takes the turning for King's Lynn. Her first lecture is at ten. She has plenty of time.

Ruth teaches at the University of North Norfolk (UNN is the unprepossessing acronym), a new university just outside King's Lynn. She teaches archaeology, which is a new discipline there, specialising in forensic archaeology, which is newer still. Phil, her head of department, frequently jokes that there is nothing new about archaeology and Ruth always smiles dutifully. It is only a matter of time, she thinks, before Phil gets himself a bumper sticker. ‘Archaeologists dig it.' ‘You're never too old for an archaeologist.' Her special interest is bones. Why didn't the skeleton go to the ball? Because he had no body to dance with. She has heard them all but she still laughs every time. Last year her students bought her a life-size cut-out of Bones from
Star Trek
. He stands at the top of her stairs, terrifying the cats.

On the radio someone is discussing life after death. Why do we feel the need to create a heaven? Is this a sign that there is one or just wishful thinking on a massive scale? Ruth's parents talk about heaven as if it is very familiar, a kind of cosmic shopping centre where they will know their way around and have free passes for the park-and-ride, and where Ruth will languish forever in the underground car park. Until she is Born Again, of course. Ruth prefers the Catholic heaven, remembered from student trips to Italy and Spain. Vast cloudy skies, incense and smoke, darkness and mystery. Ruth likes the Vast: paintings by John Martin, the Vatican, the Norfolk sky. Just as well, she thinks wryly
as she negotiates the turn into the university grounds.

The university consists of long, low buildings, linked by glass walkways. On grey mornings like this it looks inviting, the buttery light shining out across the myriad car parks, a row of dwarf lamps lighting the way to the Archaeology and Natural Sciences Building. Closer to, it looks less impressive. Though the building is only ten years old, cracks are appearing in the concrete façade, there is graffiti on the walls and a good third of the dwarf lamps don't work. Ruth hardly notices this, however, as she parks in her usual space and hauls out her heavy rucksack – heavy because it is half-full of bones.

Climbing the dank-smelling staircase to her office, she thinks about her first lecture: First Principles in Excavation. Although they are postgraduates, many of her students will have little or no first-hand experience of digs. Many are from overseas (the university needs the fees) and the frozen East Anglian earth will be quite a culture shock for them. This is why they won't do their first official dig until April.

As she scrabbles for her key card in the corridor, she is aware of two people approaching her. One is Phil, the Head of Department, the other she doesn't recognise. He is tall and dark, with greying hair cut very short and there is something hard about him, something contained and slightly dangerous that makes her think that he can't be a student and certainly not a lecturer. She stands aside to let them pass but, to her surprise, Phil stops in front of her and speaks in a serious voice which nevertheless contains an ill-concealed edge of excitement.

‘Ruth. There's someone who wants to meet you.'

A student after all, then. Ruth starts to paste a welcoming smile on her face but it is frozen by Phil's next words.

‘This is Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson. He wants to talk to you about a murder.'

‘Suspected murder,' Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson says quickly.

‘Yes, yes,' says Phil, just as quickly, shooting a look at Ruth as if to say, ‘Look at me talking to a real detective.' Ruth keeps her face impassive.

‘This is Doctor Ruth Galloway,' says Phil. ‘She's our forensics expert.'

‘Pleased to meet you,' says Nelson without smiling. He gestures towards the locked door of Ruth's office. ‘Can we?'

Ruth slides in her key card and pushes open the door. Her office is tiny, barely six feet across. One wall is entirely taken up by bookshelves, another by the door and a third by a grubby window with a view of an even grubbier ornamental lake. Ruth's desk squats against the fourth wall, with a framed poster of Indiana Jones – ironical, she always explains hastily – hanging over it. When she has tutorials the students frequently spill out into the corridor and she props the door open with her cat doorstop, a present from Peter. But now she slams the door shut and Phil and the detective stand there awkwardly, looking too big for the space. Nelson, in particular, seems to block out all the light as he stands, scowling, in front of the window. He looks too broad, too tall, too
grown up
for the room.

‘Please …' Ruth gestures to the chairs stacked by the door. Phil makes a great performance of giving Nelson his chair first, practically wiping away the dust with his jumper sleeve.

Ruth squeezes behind her desk, which gives her an illusion of security, of being in charge. This illusion is instantly shattered when Nelson leans back, crosses his legs and addresses her in a brisk monotone. He has a slight Northern accent, which only serves to make him sound more efficient, as if he hasn't time for the slow vowels of Norfolk.

‘We've found some bones,' he says. ‘They seem to be a child's but they look old. I need to know how old.'

Ruth is silent but Phil chips in eagerly. ‘Where did you find them, Inspector?'

‘Near the bird sanctuary. Saltmarsh.'

Phil looks at Ruth. ‘But that's right where you …'

‘I know it,' Ruth cuts in. ‘What makes you think the bones look old?'

‘They're brown, discoloured, but they look in good condition. I thought that was your area,' he says, suddenly aggressive.

‘It is,' says Ruth calmly. ‘I assume that's why you're here?'

‘Well, would you be able to tell if they are modern or not?' asks Nelson, again sounding rather belligerent.

‘A recent discovery is usually obvious,' says Ruth, ‘you can tell by appearance and surface. Older bones are more tricky. Sometimes it's almost impossible to tell fifty-year-old bones from two-thousand-year-old. You need radiocarbon dating for that.'

‘Professor Galloway is an expert on bone preservation.' This is Phil again, anxious not to be left out. ‘She's worked in Bosnia, on the war graves …'

‘Will you come and look?' Nelson interrupts.

Ruth pretends to consider but, of course, she is utterly fascinated. Bones! On the Saltmarsh! Where she did that first unforgettable dig with Erik. It could be anything. It could be a find. It could be …

‘You suspect it's a murder?' she asks.

Nelson looks uncomfortable for the first time. ‘I'd rather not say,' he says heavily, ‘not at the present time. Will you come and look?'

Ruth stands up. ‘I've got a lecture at ten. I could come in my lunch break.'

‘I'll send a car for you at twelve,' says Nelson.

*

Much to Ruth's secret disappointment, Nelson does not send a police car complete with flashing blue light. Instead he appears himself, driving a muddy Mercedes. She is waiting, as agreed, by the main gate, and he does not even get out of the car but merely leans over and opens the passenger door. Ruth climbs in, feeling fat, as she always does in cars. She has a morbid dread of the seatbelt not fitting around her or of some invisible weight sensor setting off a shrill alarm. ‘Twelve and a half stone! Twelve and a half stone in car! Emergency! Press ejector button.'

Nelson glances at Ruth's rucksack. ‘Got everything you need?'

‘Yes.' She has brought her instant excavation kit: pointing trowel, small hand shovel, plastic freezer bags for
samples, tapes, notebook, pencils, paint brushes, compass, digital camera. She has also changed into trainers and is wearing a reflective jacket. She is annoyed to find herself thinking that she must look a complete mess.

‘So you live out Saltmarsh way?' Nelson says, pulling out across the traffic with a squeal of tyres. He drives like a maniac.

‘Yes,' says Ruth, feeling defensive though she doesn't know why. ‘New Road.'

‘New Road!' Nelson lets out a bark of laughter. ‘I thought only twitchers lived out there.'

‘Well, the warden of the bird sanctuary is one of my neighbours,' says Ruth, struggling to remain polite while keeping one foot clamped on an imaginary brake.

‘I wouldn't fancy it,' says Nelson. ‘Too isolated.'

‘I like it,' says Ruth. ‘I did a dig there and never left.'

‘A dig? Archaeology?'

‘Yes.' Ruth is remembering that summer, ten years ago. Sitting around the campfire in the evenings, eating burnt sausages and singing corny songs. The sound of birdsong in the mornings and the marsh blooming purple with sea lavender. The time when sheep trampled their tents at night. The time when Peter got stranded out on the tidal marsh and Erik had to rescue him, crawling on his hands and knees across the mudflats. The unbelievable excitement when they found that first wooden post, proof that the henge actually existed. She remembers the exact sound of Erik's voice as he turned and shouted at them across the incoming tide, ‘We've found it!'

She turns to Nelson. ‘We were looking for a henge.'

‘A henge? Like Stonehenge?'

‘Yes. All it means is a circular bank with a ditch around it. Usually with posts inside the circle.'

‘I read somewhere that Stonehenge is just a big sundial. A way of telling the time.'

‘Well, we don't know exactly what it was for,' says Ruth, ‘but it's safe to say that it involves ritual of some kind.'

Nelson shoots a strange look at her.

‘Ritual?'

‘Yes, worship, offerings, sacrifices.'

‘Sacrifices?' echoes Nelson. He seems genuinely interested now, the faintly condescending note has disappeared from his voice.

‘Well, sometimes we find evidence of sacrifices. Pots, spears, animal bones.'

‘What about human bones? Do you ever find human bones?'

‘Yes, sometimes human bones.'

There is silence and then Nelson says, ‘Funny place for one of those henge things, isn't it? Right out to sea.'

‘This wasn't sea then. Landscape changes. Only ten thousand years ago this country was still linked to the continent. You could walk from here to Scandinavia.'