The Janus Stone (24 page)

'Do you remember the breathing you heard on the site? I said I thought it might be a dog?' asks Max, leaning in to pat the now delirious dog. 'Well, this is her. She's a stray, been hanging round the site for weeks, so I thought I'd take her in.'

'A dog is for life...' says Ruth, pointing to the car sticker.

'Well, exactly. And I think I need some company.' Max's face darkens momentarily but lightens when the dog leaps through the window and flings herself on him.

'She wants to join the party,' says Ruth, who is thinking that the dog is more gregarious than she is. A party animal.

'I'd better put her on the lead,' says Max. 'She might get overexcited with so many people about.'

'What's her name?'

'Claudia.' Max grins. 'It's a suitably Roman name and she does have claws, as I know to my cost.'

Ruth pats the leaping, wriggling dog. 'Will you have room for her in Brighton?'

'Yes, I've got a garden and I'm looking forward to long walks on the seafront. It'll keep me fit.'

He looks pretty fit already but Ruth does not say this. Max hands her Claudia's lead (slightly to her alarm) and rustles around in the boot of the Range Rover.

'I've got something for you.'

He emerges with a carrier bag which he hands to Ruth.

'What...?'

'Look inside.'

Ruth looks and sees another dog. A stuffed one this time, rather battered by the years, but still smiling.

'Elizabeth's dog,' says Max, rather thickly. 'She called it Wolfie. I thought your baby should have it. It's ridiculous me keeping it, after all.'

Ruth looks from the stuffed dog to Max, holding Claudia on the lead, and her eyes suddenly fill with tears.

'Thank you,' she says. 'I'm very honoured.'

'No doubt Nelson will say it constitutes a health hazard,' says Max, more briskly, 'but I'm sure you won't listen to him.'

'Why change the habit of a lifetime?'

They rejoin the party and Ruth unbends sufficiently to dance with Irish Ted. In the distance, she can see Cathbad building the inevitable bonfire.

'You're a good mover for a pregnant lady,' says Ted.

'Thank you.'

He smiles, gold tooth glinting, and Ruth remembers what she has always wanted to ask him. Leaning forward, she whispers, 'Why are you called Irish Ted?'

'Don't tell anyone,' whispers back Ted. 'I am Irish but I'm not really called Ted.'

It is past midnight but the bonfire is still glowing. Ruth walks slowly down the hill. She is exhausted but it was a good party. Cathbad has danced in honour of the Sun God, Max has finished his dig and gained a companion, and she isn't going home alone. She smiles at the woman walking next to her. It had been Cathbad who suggested that she invite her mother—'Gaia the Earth Goddess, you know. The eternal mother. It's all linked'—and, rather to Ruth's surprise, her mother had readily accepted. She has spent the evening talking to Max about mosaics, singing madrigals with the Druids, and dancing with both Clough and Ted. Now, she puts an arm round Ruth.

'Tired?'

'A bit.'

'We'll go home and have a nice cup of tea. Then you should go to bed. You need your sleep when you're pregnant.'

Roman mothers, thinks Ruth, were probably saying the same thing to their daughters on this same site, two thousand years ago. Come in and sit by the hearth, have some herbal infusion and pray to Hecate for a safe delivery.

Everything changes but nothing is destroyed.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks must go to my aunt Marjorie Scott-Robinson who has been an invaluable source of information on Norfolk, ghosts, tides and the best way to get a large boat under a low bridge. For this and for all the laughter and encouragement—Marge, thank you.

There are, as far as I know, no Roman remains at Swaffham but there is a wonderful Roman site nearby, at Caister St Edmund. Similarly, though Norwich is rich in wonderful houses, Woolmarket Street is fictional. Norwich Castle does indeed house a magnificent museum but the exhibits I mention are (apart from the teapots) imaginary.

Thanks to Andrew Maxted, Matthew Pope and Lucy Sibun for their archaeological expertise. Particular thanks to Lucy for her insights into life as a forensic archaeologist. However, I have only followed the experts' advice as far as it suits the plot and any resulting mistakes are mine alone. Thanks also to Graham Ranger for his unforgettable description of the 'smell' of crime.

Heartfelt thanks to my editor Jane Wood, my agent Tif Loehnis and to all at Quercus and Janklow and Nesbit. Love and thanks always to my husband Andrew and to our children Alex and Juliet.

THE HOUSE AT SEA'S END

Coming in Fall 2011, the next Ruth Galloway novel

PROLOGUE

November

Two people, a man and a woman, are walking along a hospital corridor. It is obvious that they have been here before. The woman's face is soft, reminiscent; the man looks wary, holding back slightly at the entrance to the ward. Indeed the list of restrictions printed on the door looks enough to frighten anyone. No flowers, no phones, no children under eight, no coughers or sneezers. The woman points at the phone sign (a firmly crossed-out silhouette of a rather dated-looking phone) but the man just shrugs. The woman smiles, as if she is used to getting this sort of response from him.

They press a buzzer and are admitted.

Three beds in, they stop. A brown-haired woman is sitting up in bed holding a baby. She is not feeding it, she is just looking at it, staring, as if she is trying to memorise every feature. The first woman, who is blonde and attractive, swoops down and kisses the new mother. Then she bends over the baby, brushing it with her hair. The baby opens opaque dark eyes but doesn't cry. The man hovers in the background but the blonde woman gestures for him to come closer. He doesn't kiss mother or baby but he says something which makes both women laugh indulgently.

The baby's sex is easy to guess, as the bed is surrounded by pink cards and rosettes, even a slightly deflated balloon announcing 'It's a girl.' The baby herself, though, is dressed in navy blue as if the mother is taking an early stand about such stereotyping. The blonde woman holds the baby who stares at her with those dark, solemn eyes. The brown-haired woman looks at the man and looks away again quickly.

When visiting time is over, the blonde woman leaves presents and kisses and one last caress of the baby's head. The man stands at the foot of the bed, pawing the ground slightly, as if impatient to be off. The brown-haired woman smiles, cradling the baby in an ageless gesture of serene maternity.

At the door, the blonde woman turns and waves. The man has already left.

But, five minutes later, he is back alone, running. He skids to a halt by the bed. Wordlessly, the woman puts the baby into his arms. She is crying, though the baby is still silent.

'She looks like you,' she whispers.

ONE

March

THE TIDE IS OUT.
In the late evening light, the sands stretch into the distance, bands of yellow and grey and gold. The water in the rock pools reflects a pale blue sky. Three men and a woman walk slowly over the beach, occasionally stopping to examine something on the ground. One of the men holds something that looks rather like a staff which he plants into the sand at regular intervals. After a few miles, the beach meets an estuary, a wide shallow river meeting the sea in a swirl of currents and eddies. Now the land curves away sharply, leaving a jagged triangular cliff jutting outwards. On top of the cliff is a grey stone house, faintly gothic in style, with battlements and a curved tower facing out to sea. A Union Jack is flying from the tower.

'Sea's End House,' says one of the men, stopping to rest his back.

'Doesn't that MP live there?' asks another of the men.

The woman has stopped at the edge of the river and is looking across at the house. The light is fading now and the water is dark grey, almost black in places.

'Jack Hastings,' she says. 'He's an MEP.'

Although the woman is the youngest of the four and has a distinctly alternative look—purple spiky hair, piercings and an army surplus jacket—the others seem to treat her with respect. Now one of the men says, almost pleadingly, 'Don't you think we should knock off, Trace?'

The man holding the staff, a bald giant known as Irish Ted, adds, 'There's a good pub here. The Sea's End.'

The other men stifle smiles. Ted is famous for knowing every pub in Norfolk, no mean feat in a county reputed to have a pub for every day of the year.

'Let's just walk this side of the estuary,' says Trace, getting out a camera. 'We can take some GPS readings.'

'Erosion's bad here,' says Ted. 'I've been reading about it. Sea's End House has been declared unsafe. Jack Hastings is in a right old two and eight. Keeps ranting on about an Englishman's home being his castle.'

They all look up at the grey house on the cliff. The curved wall of the tower is only two or three feet from the precipice. The remains of a fence hang crazily in midair.

'There was a whole garden in front of the house once. Greenhouses the lot,' says one of the men. 'My dad used to do gardening round here.'

'Beach has silted up too,' says Trace. 'That big storm in February has shifted a lot of stone.'

They all look inland to where banks of pebbles form a shelf below the cliffs.

'Looks like a cliff fall to me,' says Ted.

'Maybe,' says Trace. 'Let's get some readings anyway.'

She leads the way along the river path. Sand gives way to pebble and stone with occasional clumps of gorse and sea lavender. On the far side of the river they can see boats and lobster pots moored above the tidal line, but their side is deserted.

'I feel like Man Friday,' says Ted, placing a large Doc Marten on a stretch of virgin sand.

'There's no way off the beach this side,' says the man whose father was a gardener. 'We'll have to wade across.'

'We'd better watch the tide then,' says Trace. 'We don't want to get cut off.'

The fourth man, whose name is Steve, wanders over to the edge of the cliff. Here rubble forms a mound almost six feet high. Steve starts to take soil samples, putting each different sample into a labelled plastic bag. Ted plunges his staff into the ground and takes a reading. Trace photographs the cliff face and the bank of the estuary, leaning close to include the layers of sand, striped white, grey and black.

'Hey, look at this!'

Steve has scraped away some of the rubble. Trace walks over and sees that the debris from the cliff, plus the stones washed up from the sea, have formed a kind of wall filling up a narrow ravine. Steve has made a gap in the wall and is pulling something from the sandy earth below.

'What is it?'

'Looks like a human arm,' says Ted matter-of-factly.

Detective Sergeant David Clough is eating. Nothing new in that. Dave eats almost constantly throughout the working day, starting with a McDonald's breakfast, moving on through several Mars Bars and a Pot Noodle for lunch, through a sustaining sandwich and cake at tea time before treating himself to a pint and a curry for supper. Despite this, Clough's waistline is admirably trim, a fact he attributes to 'football and shagging.' Recently though he has acquired a girlfriend, which has cut down on at least one of these activities. Nevertheless, when his phone rings and he sees her name on Caller ID, his face softens.

'Trace! Hi babe.'

Detective Sergeant Judy Johnson, who is (under protest) sharing a desk with Clough, makes gagging motions. Clough ignores her, ingesting the last of his blueberry muffin.

'Dave, you'd better come,' says Trace. 'We've found some bones.'

But, by the time that Clough and Judy arrive at Broughton Sea's End, the tide is coming in and it's too dangerous to go down onto the beach. Trace and Steve are waiting for them at the top of the cliff, near the entrance to Sea's End House. In front of them, the land slopes down gently to the river as it winds into the sea. On the far bank, the cliffs rise dark and straight. Ted and the other man, Craig, have gone to the pub.

'Won't the tide wash the bones away?' asks Judy.

'They're protected by the cliff fall at present,' says Trace.

'Spring tide though,' says Steve. 'It'll be a high one.'

They watch as the water advances, incredibly quickly now, joining rock pools together, merging with the oncoming rush from the estuary. Seagulls fly low over the sea, returning to their nests in the cliff.

'Are you sure they were human bones?' asks Clough, shivering slightly. The sun has gone in and the wind is rising.

'Pretty sure,' says Trace.

'How old?' asks Clough.

'I don't know. We'd need Ruth Galloway to have a look.'

Trace, Clough and Judy exchange looks. Only Steve does not react to the name. 'Isn't she the forensics girl? I thought she'd left.'

'She was on maternity leave,' says Judy. 'I think she's back at work now.'

'Should be at home looking after her kiddie,' says Clough.

'She's a single mother,' snaps Trace. 'Presumably she needs the money.' She's not Ruth's biggest fan but sometimes Dave's knee-jerk sexism gets on her nerves.

'What are you doing here anyway, Trace?' asks Judy hastily.

'Survey on coastal erosion. For the university. We're surveying all the North Norfolk beaches.'

'Taking them bloody ages,' complains Clough.

'Actually we're going incredibly quickly,' says Trace. This is her first project as lead archaeologist and she is touchy about any criticism. As Clough should know by now.

'Anyway we all know the sea's coming closer,' says Clough, carrying on regardless. 'Just look at that house over there. A few more months and it'll be fish food.'

They all look towards Sea's End House. The lights are on, making the square grey house look unexpectedly cosy.

'Must be awful,' says Judy, 'seeing your home fall into the sea.'

Trace shrugs. 'We've made some interesting finds though. Palaeolithic hand axe at Titchwell, a Roman bracelet at Burgh Castle, lots of shipwrecks.'

'Shipwrecks?' says Clough. 'Any treasure?'

Trace shakes her head. 'Just timber mostly. One was quite dramatic though, a whole boat sticking up out of the sand.'

'How come you're discovering these things?' asks Judy, as they walk back along the cliff path. 'If the sea's advancing, wouldn't it cover everything up?'

Clough is glad she has asked this. He'd wanted to but was scared of looking stupid in front of Trace. That's the trouble with going out with a brainy woman.

'Tides change,' says Trace shortly. 'Sand gets moved; parts get silted up, other parts uncovered. The pebbles get pushed further up the beach. Things that were buried become exposed.'

'Like our bones,' says Steve. 'They may have been buried well above the tidal line but the water's getting closer, it's wearing the earth away. Then the part of the cliff came down on top of them.'

'Did you get a good look at the bones?' asks Clough.

'Not really,' says Steve. 'Tide was coming in too fast. We didn't want to get cut off on that side of the estuary. But, just at a glance, I'd say we were looking at more than one body.'

Clough and Judy exchange glances. 'Definitely human?'

'In my humble opinion, yes.'

'We found something else too,' says Trace, whose opinions are never humble.

They have reached the pub. Its sign, which, rather tactlessly, shows a man falling off a cliff, creaks in the gathering wind. They can see Ted through the window, holding a pint to his lips. In the yellow light from the window, Trace holds out a piece of material about eight inches long. It was obviously once white but is now stained brown and streaked with grime.

'Clothing?' suggests Judy.

'Too thick,' says Steve. 'Could be a sheet.'

'Or a sail?' suggests Trace.

'Fantastic,' Clough rubs his hands together. 'The boss is going to love this.'

'Where is Nelson anyway?' says Trace.

'On holiday,' says Clough. 'Back on Monday. He'll be counting the days.'

Judy laughs. Nelson's dislike of holidays is a byword at the station.