The Crossing Places - Elly Griffiths (3 page)

‘As an offering to the Gods. Possibly it would have been staked down. Did you see the grass around the wrist? That could have been a rope of some kind.’

‘Jesus. Staked down and left to die?’

‘Well maybe, or maybe it was dead before they left it here. The stakes would be just to keep it in place.’

‘Jesus,’ he says again.

Suddenly Ruth remembers why she is here, in this police car, with this man. ‘Why did you think the bones might be modern?’ she asks.

Nelson sighs. ‘Some ten years ago there was a child that went missing. Near here. We never found the body. I thought it might be her.’

‘Her?’

‘Her name was Lucy Downey.’

Ruth is silent. Having a name makes it all more real somehow. After all, hadn’t the archaeologist who discovered the first modern human given her a name? Funnily enough, she was called Lucy too.

Nelson sighs again. ‘There were letters sent to me about the Lucy Downey case. It’s funny, what you said earlier.’

‘What?’ asks Ruth, rather bemused.

‘About ritual and that. There was all sorts of rubbish in the letters but one thing they said was that Lucy had been a sacrifice and that we’d find her where the earth meets the sky’

‘Where the earth meets the sky,’ Ruth repeats. ‘But that could be anywhere.’

‘Yes, but this place, it feels like the end of the world somehow. That’s why, when I heard that bones had been found …’

‘You thought they might be hers?’

‘Yes. It’s hard for the parents when they don’t know.

Sometimes, finding a body, it gives them a chance to grieve.’

‘You’re sure she’s dead then?’

Nelson is silent for a moment before replying, concentrating on overtaking a lorry on the inside. ‘Yes,’ he says at last. ‘Five-year-old child, goes missing in November, no sign of her for ten years. She’s dead alright.’

‘November?’

‘Yes. Almost ten years ago to the day.’

Ruth thinks of November, the darkening nights, the wind howling over the marshes. She thinks of the parents, waiting, praying for their daughter’s return, jumping at every phone call, hoping that every day might bring news.

The slow ebbing away of hope, the dull certainty of loss.

‘The parents,’ she asks. ‘Do they still live nearby?’

‘Yes, they live out Fakenham way.’ He swerves to avoid a lorry. Ruth closes her eyes. ‘Cases like this,’ he goes on, ‘it’s usually the parents.’

Ruth is shocked. ‘The parents who killed the child?’

Nelson’s voice is matter-of-fact, the Northern vowels very flat. ‘Nine cases out of ten. You get the parents all distraught, news conferences, floods of tears and then we find the child buried in the back garden.’

‘How awful.’

‘Yes. But this case, I don’t know, I’m sure it wasn’t them.

They were a nice couple, not young, been trying for a baby for years and then Lucy came along. They adored her.’

‘How dreadful for them,’ says Ruth inadequately.

‘Dreadful, yes.’ Nelson’s voice is expressionless. ‘But they never blamed us. Never blamed me or the team. They still send me Christmas cards. That’s why I—’ He falters for a second. ‘That’s why I wanted a result for them.’

They are at the university now. Nelson screeches to a halt outside the Natural Sciences building. Students hurrying to lectures turn and stare. Although it is only two thirty, it is already getting dark.

‘Thanks for the lift,’ says Ruth slightly awkwardly. ‘I’ll get the bones dated for you.’

‘Thanks,’ says Nelson. He looks at Ruth for what seems to be the first time. She is acutely aware of her wild hair and mud-stained clothes. ‘This discovery, might it be important for you?’

‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘It might be.’

‘Glad someone’s happy.’ As soon as Ruth is out of the car he drives off without saying goodbye. She doesn’t think she will ever see him again.

Nelson cuts across two lanes of traffic as he heads into King’s Lynn. His car is unmarked but he makes it a point of honour always to drive as if he is pursuing a suspect. He enjoys the expressions on the faces of the clueless uniforms when, after pulling them in for speeding, he flourishes his warrant card. In any case, this route is so familiar that he could drive it in his sleep: past the industrial park and the Campbell’s soup factory, along the London Road and through the archway in the old city wall. Doctor Ruth Galloway would be sure to tell him exactly how old this wall is: ‘I can’t be that exact but I estimate that it was built before lunch on Friday 1 February 1556’. But, to Nelson, it just represents a final traffic jam before he reaches the police station.

He is no fan of his adopted county. He is a northerner, born in Blackpool, within sight of the Golden Mile. He went to the Catholic grammar school, St Joseph’s (Holy Joe’s as it was known locally) and joined the police as a cadet, aged sixteen. Right from the start, he’d loved the job. He loved the camaraderie, the long hours, the physical exertion, the sense of doing something worthwhile. And, though he would never admit it, he’d even liked the paperwork.

Nelson is methodical, he likes lists and schedules, he is excellent at cutting through crap. He’d risen through the 32

ranks and soon had a pretty good life: satisfying work, congenial mates, pub on Friday nights, the match on Saturdays, golf on Sundays.

But then the job in Norfolk had come up and his wife, Michelle, had been on at him to take it. Promotion, more money, and ‘the chance to live in the country’. Who in their right mind, thinks Nelson, thinking of the Saltmarsh, would want to live in the bloody country? It’s all cows and mud and locals who look like the result of several generations of keeping it in the family. But he’d given in and they had moved to King’s Lynn. Michelle had started working for a posh hairdressing salon. They’d sent the girls to private schools and they’d come back laughing at his accent (‘It’s not bath, Daddy, it’s ba-arth …’). He’d done well, become a detective inspector in double quick time, people had even talked of higher things. Until Lucy Downey went missing.

Nelson turns, without indicating, into the station car park. He is thinking of Lucy and of the body on the marsh.

He had always been sure that Lucy was buried somewhere near the Saltmarsh, and when the bones were found he thought that he was near an ending at last. Not a happy ending, but at least an ending. And now this Doctor Ruth Galloway tells him that the bones are from some bloody Stone Age body. Jesus, all that stuff she’d spouted about henges and burials and being able to walk to Scandinavia.

He’d thought she was taking the piss at first. But, when they got to the site, he could see she was a professional. He admired the way that she did everything slowly and carefully, making notes, taking photos, sifting the evidence. It’s the way that police work should be done. Not that she’d ever make a policewoman. Too overweight, for one thing.

What would Michelle say about a woman so out-of-condition that she is out of breath after a five-minute walk? She would be genuinely horrified. But, then, he can’t think of any situation in which Michelle would meet Doctor Ruth Galloway. She’s not likely to start popping into the salon, not from what he could see of her hair.

But she interests him. Like all forceful people (he calls it forceful rather than bullying), he prefers people who stand up to him, but in his job that doesn’t happen often.

People either despise him or kowtow to him. Ruth had done neither. She had looked him in the face, coolly, as an equal. He thinks he’s never met anyone, any woman, quite as sure of themselves as Ruth Galloway. Even the way she dresses - baggy clothes, trainers - seemed to be a way of saying that she doesn’t care what anyone thinks.

She’s not going to tart herself up in skirts and high heels just to please men. Not that there’s anything wrong with pleasing men, muses Nelson, kicking open the door to his office, but there’s something interesting, even refreshing, about a woman who doesn’t care whether or not she’s attractive.

And the things she said about ritual were interesting too.

Nelson is frowning as he sits behind his desk. Talking about ritual and sacrifice and all that crap has brought it all back: the days and nights spent in fingertip searches, the anguished meetings with the parents, the gradual, unbearable shift from hope to despair, the station full to bursting point, teams brought in from six different forces, all dedicated to finding one little girl. All in vain.

Nelson sighs. However much he tries not to, he knows that, before he goes home tonight, he will read through the Lucy Downey files.

It is pitch black by the time Ruth drives home, edging her car carefully along New Road. There are ditches on both sides of the road and the merest twitch on the wheel can send you plunging ignominiously downwards. This has happened to Ruth once before and she is not keen to repeat the experience.

Her headlights illuminate the raised tarmac of the road; the land drops away on either side so that she seems to be driving into nothingness. Nothing but the road ahead and the sky above. Where the earth meets the sky. She shivers and turns on the car radio. Radio 4, soothing, civilised and slightly smug, fills the car. ‘And now for the News Quiz …’

Ruth parks outside her broken blue fence and pulls her rucksack out of the boot. The weekenders’ house is in darkness but the warden has a light on upstairs. She assumes he goes to bed early so as to be up for the dawn chorus. Flint appears on her doorstep mewing piteously for admittance even though he has his own cat-flap and has, in fact, been snoozing inside all day. Remembering she hasn’t yet seen Sparky, Ruth feels a pang of anxiety as she opens the door. But Sparky, a small black cat with a white nose, is sleeping safely on the sofa. Ruth calls her but she stays put, flexing her claws and shutting her eyes. Sparky is a reserved character, quite unlike Flint who is now weaving ecstatically around Ruth’s legs.

‘Stop it, you stupid cat.’

She drops her rucksack on the table and puts down food for the cats. Her answer phone light is flashing. She has a feeling that it won’t be good news and when she presses PLAY she is right. Her mother’s voice, aggrieved and slightly breathless, fills the room.

‘… whether you’re coming for Christmas. Really, Ruth, you could be a bit more considerate. I heard from Simon weeks ago. I assume you’ll be coming because I can’t imagine you’ll want to spend Christmas on your own in that awful …’

Ruth clicks delete, breathing hard. In just a few short sentences her mother has managed to encapsulate years of irritation and subtle put-down. The accusation of inconsiderate behaviour, the comparison with the perfect Simon, the implication that, if she doesn’t visit her parents, Ruth’s Christmas will consist of an M & S meal for one in front of the TV. Angrily sloshing wine into a glass (her mother’s voice: ‘How are your units Ruth? Daddy and I are worried you’re getting dependent …’), Ruth composes a reply. She will never give it in person but it is comforting to stomp around the kitchen, cutting her mother down to size with thin slices of logic.

‘The reason I haven’t told you about Christmas is that I dread coming home and hearing you drone on about the Christ child and the true meaning of Christmas. Simon has been in touch because he’s a creep and an arse-licker. And if I don’t come home I’ll be with my friends or on some tropical island, not alone slumped in front of The Vicar of Dibley. And my house isn’t awful, it’s a hundred times better than your Eltham semi with its pine cladding and vile china ornaments. And Peter didn’t finish with me, I finished with him.’

She has added the last one because she knows from experience that her mother will bring up the subject of 36

Peter sometime over Christmas. ‘Peter sent us a card …

such a shame … do you ever hear? … you know he’s married now?’ That her daughter could voluntarily end a relationship with a nice-looking, eligible man is something that Ruth’s mother will never be able to accept. Ruth noticed the same tendency in her friends and colleagues when she announced that she and Peter were no longer together. ‘I’m so sorry … Has he found someone else? …

Don’t worry, he’ll come back …’ Ruth explained patiently that she had ended the relationship five years ago for the simple, yet surprisingly complicated, reason that she no longer loved him. ‘That’s right,’ people would say, ignoring her, ‘he’ll soon get bored with the new woman. In the meantime, pamper yourself, have a massage, maybe even lose some …’

To cheer herself up, Ruth boils the water for some nice, fattening pasta and rings Erik. Her first tutor, Erik Anderssen, predictably nicknamed Erik the Viking, was the man responsible for getting her into forensic archaeology.

He has been a huge influence on her life and is now a close friend. Smiling, she conjures him up: silver-blond hair pulled back in a pony tail, faded jeans, unravelling sweater. She knows he will be passionately interested in today’s find.

Erik the Viking has, appropriately enough, moved back to Norway. Ruth visited him last summer, in his log cabin by the lake - freezing morning swims followed by steaming saunas, Magda’s wonderful food, talking to Erik about Mayan civilisation as the stars came out at night. Madga, his wife, a voluptuous blonde goddess whose beauty manages to make you feel better, not worse, about your self, is another good friend. She never once mentioned Peter, even though she had been there that summer when Ruth and Peter first fell in love; had, in fact, by her tact and gentle benevolence, actually brought them together.

But Erik is out. Ruth leaves a message and, feeling restless, gets the battered lump of metal out of her rucksack and examines it. Still in its freezer bag, carefully dated and labelled, it stares back at her. Phil wanted her to leave it in the Department safe but she refused. She had wanted to bring the torque home, to the Saltmarsh, at least for one night. Now she examines it under her desk light.

Stained dark green from its long immersion in the marsh, the metal nonetheless has a burnished sheen that looks like it might be gold. A gold torque! How much would that be worth? She thinks of the so-called ‘marriage tore’ found near here, at Snettisham. That had been a wonderful, elaborate object, showing a human face with a ring through its mouth. This piece is more battered, perhaps it has been broken by ploughing or digging.

However, squinting closely, she can just see a twisted pattern, almost like a plait. The piece in her hand is barely fifteen centimetres long but she can imagine it as a full half circle, imagine it round the neck of some savage beauty. Or round the neck of a child, a sacrificial victim?

She remembers Nelson’s bitter disappointment when he learnt that the bones were not those of Lucy Downey.

What must it feel like to have those deaths, those ghosts, forever on your mind? Ruth knows that for him the Iron Age bones are an annoyance, an irrelevancy, but for her they are as real as the five-year-old girl who went missing all those years ago. Why were the bones left on the edges of the marsh? Was she (from their size, Ruth thinks the bones are female but she cannot be sure) left for dead, sinking in the treacherous mud? Or was she killed somewhere else and buried at the start of the marshland, to mark the beginning of the sacred landscape?

When her pasta is cooked Ruth eats it at the table by the window, Erik’s book The Shivering Sand propped up in front of her. The title is from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins and Ruth turns again to the first page where Erik quotes Collins’ description of the sands:

The last of the evening light was fading away; and over all the desolate place there hung a still and awful calm.

The heave of the main ocean on the great sandbank out in the bay, was a heave that made no sound. The inner sea lay lost and dim, without a breath of wind to stir it. Patches of nasty ooze floated, yellow-white on the dead surface of the water. Scum and slime shone faintly in certain places, where the last of the light still caught them on the two great spits of rock jutting out, north and south, into the sea. It was now the time of the turn of the tide: and even as I stood there waiting, the broad brown face of the quicksand began to dimple and quiver - the only moving thing in all the horrid place.

Collins, surely, had understood about the ritual landscape of the sea and land and of the haunted, uncanny Places that lie between the two. Ruth remembers that at least one character in The Moonstone meets their death on sands. She remembers another phrase, ‘What the Sand gets, the Sand keeps forever.’ But the Saltmarsh had given up some of its secrets; first the henge and now this body, just waiting there for Ruth to discover them. Surely there must be a link.

Reading again about the discovery of the henge (Erik wrote at least three books on the strength of the find), Ruth remembers how eerie it had looked in that first morning light, like a shipwreck that had risen silently to the surface, the wooden posts forming a sombre ring, black against the sky. She remembers Erik telling fireside stories about Norse water spirits: the Nixes, shape-shifters who lure unwary travellers into the water; the Nokke, river sprites who sing at dawn and dusk. Water as a source of life and a place of death. Water is also often associated with women; women with vengeance in their hearts, luring men to a watery grave. Drowned spirits, their hair flowing green around them, their webbed hands reaching out above the turning tide …

Ruth reads on, her pasta forgotten. She has no lectures tomorrow; she will go back to the place where the bones were buried.

But in the morning it is raining, driving, slanting rain that batters against the windows and envelops the marsh in an impenetrable grey haze. Frustrated, Ruth busies herself with work: writing up lecture notes, ordering books from Amazon, even cleaning out her fridge. But she keeps coming back to the torque lying in its freezer bag on the table by the window. Sensing her interest, Flint jumps up and sits heavily on the bag. Ruth pushes him off. She doesn’t want Phil to notice the cat hairs. He is apt to be whimsical about the cats, calling them ‘Ruth’s familiars’.