Ruth Galloway (53 page)

The noise of the diggers is making it hard to speak. Ruth is about to suggest they leave the site when she sees Nelson coming towards them, frowning as he strides through the rubble. She had forgotten about Nelson.

‘Does he follow you everywhere?' mutters Max.

Nelson, too, seems less than pleased to find that Ruth has company. ‘Long time no see,' he says drily to Max.

Ruth can't stand much more of this. ‘Come on,' she says, ‘let's get out of here.'

They stop, as if by mutual consent, by the stone archway, still standing although the rest of the front wall has disappeared. Towers, archways, crenellations – all crumbled into dust.

‘Are they leaving the arch?' asks Max.

‘Yes,' says Ruth, ‘it's classy apparently.'

They stand for a minute looking up at the words inscribed in the stone and Ruth sees another figure approaching. A man dressed in clerical black, walking slowly along the boards laid down over the churned-up earth. Father Hennessey. The foreman will have a fit, thinks Ruth.

Father Hennessey approaches and, suddenly, his face is filled with such recognition and delight that Ruth is stunned.

Why on earth is he so pleased to see her? Or is it Nelson he is looking at?

But the priest looks straight past Ruth and Nelson. His blue eyes are full of tears.

‘Martin,' he says, ‘how good to see you again.'

An opportunity presented itself today. The mother had gone out, leaving the child asleep in its bed. It no longer sleeps in a cot but in a bed with bars at the side to stop it falling out. She was worried about leaving the child alone in the house with me but she was in pain from an infected tooth and needed to see the dentist urgently. I assured her smoothly that the child was safe with me, as indeed she will be. As soon as the mother had gone I got my knife and went straight into the room.

She was asleep, her mouth slightly open. She is not an attractive child, whatever the mother says. I turned her over so the neck was exposed. I could see a little pulse there. The perfect place.

To tell you the truth, dear diary, I had slightly been dreading this moment. Would I be struck by Pity, that emasculating emotion? Would I lack the requisite manliness to do the deed? But I am pleased to report that, as I stood above the infant like an avenging angel, I felt no pity at all. Rather a great joy swept over me, a feel of immense power and
righteousness
. Yes, that was it. I knew beyond any doubt that I was doing the
right thing.
My arm felt like steel, strong yet flexible. My eyes burned in my skull. I lifted the knife.

Then – oh banality! – the phone rang. Oh, evil modern influence, obtruding on the ancient rituals! Of course, the moment was ruined and I went to answer the infernal machine. It was Them. We chatted quite civilly but they will be back next week. So little time.

Still very hot. The house waits.

At first Ruth does not understand what is happening. She looks from Hennessey to Max and back again, wondering as she does so why Nelson also looks so shell shocked. And it is Nelson who speaks first.

‘Martin,' he says, ‘
you're
Martin Black?'

Max laughs. A laugh Ruth has never heard before, harsh and slightly wild. ‘Black, Grey,' he says, ‘what's the difference?'

And then Ruth remembers. Martin and Elizabeth Black. The two children who had lived at the home and had vanished so mysteriously. Can it really be true? Can Max, who claimed to know nothing about the Woolmarket Street site, actually have lived here once? Is this why he has come back to Norfolk? And if he has kept this secret from her, says another, darker, voice in her ear, what else has he been hiding?

Father Hennessey now comes closer to Max, who has turned deadly white. ‘Martin,' he says, in a voice choked with emotion, ‘I never thought I'd see you again. My dear boy.'

Max reaches out a hand and touches the priest's arm. His eyes, too, are full of tears.

‘Father Hennessey,' he says, ‘I never forgot you.'

‘And Elizabeth?' It is barely a whisper.

‘She died.' Max turns his face away.

Nelson's voice is like a rush of cold air. ‘I think you need to answer a few questions, Mr Grey. Or is it Mr Black?'

‘I've done nothing wrong,' says Max defiantly.

‘I'll be the judge of that,' says Nelson. ‘Now, if you'd accompany me to the station.'

Max looks as if he is about to refuse but then he gives a little shrug and follows Nelson out through the archway. No wonder he knew what the inscription meant, thinks Ruth.

Father Hennessey hesitates and then, with an apologetic glance at Ruth, he hurries after the other men. Ruth is left on her own amongst the diggers.

*

Late afternoon and Ruth is at home. For the first few hours after the revelation at the building site she had been certain that either Max or Nelson was about to call at any minute. Surely someone was going to tell her what was going on? But as time passed and she fed Flint, made herself a light lunch (and heavy pudding), tidied the sitting room, put the washing on, answered emails and finally settled down to read a dissertation on ‘The Archaeology of Disease', she had to face the fact that no one was going to think it worth updating her. She is peripheral to this case, the bones expert, the slightly eccentric academic. She is outside the main action. Max had lied to her, probably used her to get news of the Woolmarket Street site. Nelson forgets her the instant that he gets the scent of a breakthrough. The only person who thinks she is central to the case, she thinks bitterly, is
the madman who keeps leaving museum exhibits for her to find.

But then, as the birds start gathering over the Saltmarsh for their evening spectacular, thousands of little black dots like iron filings dividing and converging against the sky, Ruth sees a black Range Rover draw up beside her gate. Max.

She goes to the door, uncertain how she feels. On one hand she just wants to know what the hell is going on, on the other she has decidedly mixed feelings about Max Grey. Martin Black, of course, she doesn't know at all.

He looks desperately tired, chalk white with dark rings under his eyes. Five hours of questioning by Nelson can't be fun for anyone, of course, but Ruth now realises that he has been looking strained for some time, probably ever since the news of the body under the doorway. No, before that, from the moment he realised that Ruth's site was the old children's home, when she asked him about the words cut into the archway. Despite herself, Ruth feels sorry for him.

‘How are you?' she asks.

‘I've felt better.'

‘Do you want a cup of tea?'

‘A drink would be good.'

She gets him a glass of wine and makes herself a herbal tea (so disgusting that it must be good for her).

They sit for a minute in silence then Max says, ‘I'm sorry.'

‘What for?'

‘For lying to you.'

‘You didn't exactly lie, you just didn't tell me.'

He smiles. ‘Father Hennessey would say that was the same thing.'

‘It's incredible that he recognised you after all that time.'

‘He said it was partly the setting. Seeing me standing by the archway. Jesus – when you asked me what those words meant! They're burned into my heart.'

He takes a gulp of wine. His hands are shaking.

‘What happened at the police station?' Ruth asks.

‘Oh, Nelson took a statement. Went on for hours. They took fingerprints and everything. Talked to Father Hennessey too but they wouldn't let him stay when they questioned me.'

‘What did they question you about?'

‘My disappearance. After all, I've been a missing person for over thirty years. And about Elizabeth.'

His voice breaks when he says her name. He rubs his eyes.

Ruth says gently, ‘You said she died?'

Max looks up and now his eyes are hard. He stares at Ruth as if he doesn't see her.

‘She died,' he says. And he is not talking to Ruth but to someone else, himself perhaps, and she knows, somehow, that it is twelve-year-old Martin Black who is speaking.

‘We wanted to get to our dad. I'd had it all planned. I'd got his address from Father Hennessey's records. He always let me go into his office. I stole enough food to last us. I'd even got a tent from the storehouse – Father Hennessey used to take us camping sometimes. It was all fixed but Elizabeth … she didn't really want to go. She liked it at the home. She loved Sister James, the nun who taught the little ones. She felt safe there. But she loved me more.' For a second he sounds almost triumphant. ‘She loved me so she went with me. Only thing she wanted to take was her blasted stuffed dog.'

And Ruth sees Max's bed on the boat: the classical text open on the side table and the stuffed toy on the pillow. Elizabeth's dog.

‘At first it was OK. We stayed in an abandoned warehouse the first night and then we headed for London. I'd brought our old school uniforms. I knew they wouldn't be looking for children in uniform and I was lucky. There was a school trip to London that day so we tagged along behind them. No one noticed us. But when we got to London, that's when it started.'

‘What started?'

‘Elizabeth got sick. She'd always had lots of sore throats and colds so at first I thought it was that. I stole some throat stuff for her and she seemed better for a while. We were staying outside Swindon in an empty school. We had to head west, you see, to Holyhead. Jesus – that school. It had big snakes and ladders painted on the playground, on the tarmac. Elizabeth was scared of them. At night she thought they were coming to get her. We were sleeping in the staffroom. They had sofas in there. But she had a fever, she used to scream. It was like she didn't know me. She used to scream for our mum.'

His voice has all but died away. He is sitting slumped forward, head in hands. Flint has abandoned him. Ruth doesn't want to hear any more. The thought that the five-year-old Elizabeth might have died in that empty school, with only her twelve-year-old brother to care for her, is almost too awful to contemplate. And, if she can't contemplate it, what about Max, who has kept this secret all these years? But Ruth also feels that, having started telling his story, it
would be good for him to finish it. So she prompts gently, ‘What happened?'

Max looks at her, his gaze anguished. ‘She died. Just like that. I woke up one morning and she was dead. Lying on the sofa with a rug over her and she was dead. Her little face was cold …' He turns away and, after a few seconds, continues in a harder voice. ‘I buried her in the school grounds. They had a little vegetable patch where the earth was soft and I buried her there. I was going to bury Wolfie, her dog, with her but, when it came to it, I couldn't bear to. It smelt of her, you see. I buried her and I went on. I suppose Nelson will dig her up now. Bit of a shock for some poor primary school.' He laughs harshly.

‘What happened to you?'

‘Oh, I got to Ireland but when I saw my dad, he was drunk as a lord, didn't know me from Adam, so I didn't hang around. I lived rough for a while and got taken in by some travellers, gypsies. They were kind to me. I used to help with the horses, they went to lots of horse fairs and they had ponies that just roamed free, even in the cities. The children went to local schools sometimes. I went with them and got interested in history again. Met a teacher in one school who liked me and he encouraged me to stay and take some exams. I lived with him and his family. They were kind too. I called myself Max Grey by then. I took O Levels and A Levels and, eventually, got into Sussex. End of story.'

‘Why did you come back here?' asks Ruth.

‘Well, mostly it was the Roman dig. I am an archaeologist after all. But I suppose I wanted to see the home again. I wanted to but I was scared. DCI Nelson said that runaways
almost always go back to the place that they ran away from. Well, I suppose I was no exception. Then, when you were excavating the site, I couldn't believe it. I wanted to tell you, Ruth, I really did.'

He is looking at her earnestly. Martin Black has vanished and he is Max Grey again, soft-spoken and unthreatening.

‘That's OK,' she says, ‘it must have been … awful for you.' She is aware how inadequate this sounds.

‘I couldn't face going to the site at first, but then I couldn't resist it. I suppose I just wanted to see it one last time. Then, seeing Father Hennessey like that …'

‘I think he was very fond of you.'

‘He was really good to me. I was a delinquent in those days. Got into fights, swore, stole, but he never gave up on me. He always thought I'd make something of myself.'

‘He was right,' says Ruth.

‘Was he?' They look at each other and suddenly the moment is charged, by sadness, understanding and, unexpectedly, by something else, something that makes Ruth blush and turn away.

‘Ruth?'

But the spell is broken by the doorbell. Judy Johnson is on the doorstep, an overnight bag in her hand.

‘Hi, Ruth. I've come to stay for a few nights.'

The DNA results are waiting on Nelson's desk when he gets into work in the morning. He studies them, black coffee in hand. They prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that Roderick Spens is related to the body found under the doorway. More than that, they show that Roderick and the dead child share a common male ancestor. Nelson frowns down at the printout in his hand, thinking hard.

Finding Martin Black had been a bolt from the blue. Despite his theory about offenders returning to the scene of the crime, Nelson never honestly expected to find Martin Black wandering around the ruins of the former children's home. And never in a million years did he connect the smug archaeologist who seems to dog Ruth's footsteps with the twelve-year-old boy who went missing. ‘People grow up,' he always tells his team, ‘you're not looking for a little boy, you're looking for a man in his forties.' But, even so, the distance between Dr Max Grey and desperate runaway Martin Black seemed too vast to be straddled by one person.