The Crossing Places

CHAPTER 4

Ruth leaves her parents' house as soon as she decently can after Christmas. Phil is having a New Year's Eve party and, though in truth she would rather chew her own arm off than attend, she tells her parents that it is her duty to go.

'It would be bad for my career. After all, he is head of department.' They understand this alright. They understand that she might go to a party to further her career. It's enjoying herself they wouldn't understand.

So, on 29 December, Ruth is driving along the Mil to Norfolk. It is mid-morning and the frost has gone so she drives fast and happily, singing along to her new Bruce Springsteen CD, a Christmas present to herself. According to her brother Simon, Ruth has the musical taste of a sixteen-year-old boy. 'A tasteless sixteen-year-old boy.' But Ruth doesn't mind. She loves Bruce and Rod and Bryan.

All those ageing rockers with croaky voices and faded jeans and age-defying hair. She loves the way they sing about love and loss and the dark, soulless heart of America, and it all sounds the same; crashing guitar chords against a wall of sound, the lyrics lost in a final, frenzied crescendo.

Singing loudly, she takes the All towards Newmarket.

It hadn't been such a bad Christmas really. Her parents hadn't nagged her too much about not going to church and not being married. Simon hadn't been too irritating and her nephews were at quite interesting ages, eight and six, old enough to go to the park and play at being Neolithic hunters. The children adored Ruth because she told them stories about cavemen and dinosaurs and never noticed when their faces needed washing. 'You've got quite a gift with kids,' said her sister-in-law Cathy accusingly. 'It seems a shame…' 'What's a shame?' Ruth had asked, although she knew only too well. 'That you haven't any of your own. Though, I suppose, by now…'

By now I have resigned myself to spinsterhood and godmotherhood and slowly going mad, knitting clothes for my cats out of my own hair, thinks Ruth, neatly overtaking an overburdened people carrier. She is nearly forty and although it is not impossible that she should still have a child she has noticed people mentioning it less and less.

This suits her fine; when she was with Peter the only thing more annoying than people hinting about possible 'wedding bells' was the suggestion that she might be 'getting broody'. When she bought the cats her mother asked her straight out if they were 'baby substitutes'. 'No,'

Ruth had answered, straight-faced. 'They're kittens. If I had a baby it would be a cat substitute.'

She reaches the Saltmarsh by mid-afternoon and the winter sun is low over the reed beds. The tide is coming in and the seagulls are calling, high and excited. When Ruth gets out of her car she breathes in the wonderful sea smell, potent and mysterious, and feels glad that she is home.

Then she sees the weekenders' monster car parked outside their cottage and feels a stab of irritation. Don't say they have come here for New Year. Why can't they stay in London like everyone else, flocking to Trafalgar Square or having bijou little parties at home? Why do they have to come here to 'get away from it all'? They'll probably let off fireworks and scare every bird for miles around. Imagining David's reaction, she smiles grimly.

Inside her cottage, Flint leaps on her, mewing furiously.

Sparky, sitting on the sofa, steadfastly ignores her. Ruth's friend Shona has been coming in to feed the cats and Ruth finds welcome home flowers on the table as well as milk and white wine in the fridge. God bless Shona, thinks Ruth, putting on the kettle.

Shona, who teaches English at the university, is Ruth's best friend in Norfolk. Like Peter, she had been a volunteer on the henge dig ten years ago. Fey and Irish, with wild Pre-Raphaelite hair, Shona declared herself in sympathy with the druids and even joined them for an all-night vigil, sitting on the sand chanting until the tide forced them inland and Shona was lured away by the promise of a Guinness in the pub. That was the thing about Shona, she may have her New Age principles but you could nearly always overcome them with the promise of a drink. Shona is in a relationship with a married lecturer and sometimes she comes over to Ruth's cottage, weeping and flailing her hair around, declaring that she hates men and wants to become a nun or a lesbian or both. Then she will have a glass of wine and brighten up completely, singing along to Bruce Springsteen and telling Ruth that she is a 'dote'.

Shona is one of the best things about the university.

Her answer phone shows four messages. One is a wrong number, one is Phil reminding her about the party, one is her mother asking if she's home yet and one… one is distinctly surprising.

'Hello… er… Ruth. This is Harry Nelson speaking, from the Norfolk Police. Can you ring me? Thank you.'

Harry Nelson. She hasn't spoken to him since the day they found the Iron Age bones. She sent him the results of the carbon 14 dating, confirming that the body was probably female, pre-pubescent, dating from about 650 bc. She heard nothing back and didn't expect to. Once, before Christmas, when she was shopping dispiritedly in Norwich, she saw him striding along, looking discontented and weighed down with carrier bags. With him was a blonde woman, slim in a designer tracksuit, and two sulky-looking teenage daughters. Lurking in Borders, Ruth hid behind a display of novelty calendars and watched them. In this female environment of shopping bags and fairy lights, Nelson looked more inconveniently macho than ever. The woman (his wife surely?) turned to him with a flick of hair and a smile of practised persuasiveness.

Nelson said something, looking grumpy, and both girls laughed. They must gang up on him at home, Ruth decided, excluding him from their all-girl chats about boyfriends and mascara. But then Nelson caught up with his wife, whispered something that brought forth a genuine laugh, ruffled his daughter's careful hairstyle and sidestepped neatly away, grinning at her cry of rage. For a moment they looked united; a happy, teasing, slightly stressed family in the middle of their Christmas shopping.

Ruth turned back to the calendars. The Simpsons' grinumg yellow faces smirked back at her. She hated Christmas anyway.

Why was Harry Nelson ringing her now, at home? What was so important that he had to speak to her this minute?

And why is he so arrogant that he can't even leave a phone number? Irritated but intensely curious, Ruth rifles through the phone book to find a number for the Norfolk police. Of course it is the wrong one. 'You want CID,' says the voice at the end of the phone, sounding slightly impressed. Eventually she gets through to a flunky who connects her, somewhat reluctantly, to DCI Nelson.

'Nelson,' barks an impatient voice, sounding more Northern and even less friendly than she remembers.

'It's Ruth Galloway from the university. You rang me.'

'Oh yes. I rang you some days ago.'

'I've been away,' says Ruth. She's damned if she's going to apologise.

'Something's come up. Can you come into the station?'

Ruth is nonplussed. Of course, she wants to know what has come up but Nelson's request sounds more like an order. Also there is something a bit frightening about coming 'into the station'. It sounds uncomfortably like 'helping the police with their enquiries'.

'I'm very busy-' she begins.

'I'll send a car,' says Nelson. 'Tomorrow morning alright?'

It is on the tip of Ruth's tongue to say no, tomorrow is not alright. I'm off to a very important jet-set conference in Hawaii so I'm far too busy to drop everything just because you order me to. Instead she says, "I suppose I could spare you an hour or two.'

'Right,' says Nelson. Then he adds, 'Thank you.' It sounds as if he hasn't had much practice in saying it.