A Room Full Of Bones

CHAPTER 4

It seems impossible that six children can make this much noise. Ruth’s little house seems to be swelling with sound, its sides straining under the pressure of chocolate fingers, party games and an exuberant rendering of ‘Happy Birthday Dear Katie’. This last reminds Ruth uncomfortably of Nelson, who persists in calling her Katie. Why can’t people just accept that Ruth knows her own daughter’s name, even if it does scan better with an ‘ie’ on the end?

Kate’s little friends include two toddlers, both clients of Sandra’s, who ignore each other and run round bursting balloons, and two older children belonging to a colleague of Ruth’s. The older kids, who are called Daisy and Ben, try to organise the babies but end up playing pass-the-parcel solemnly by themselves. Ben wins a rag doll and hands it silently to his mother.

Shona, radiant in a pink velvet tunic, sits on the floor with Kate so that people who don’t know her say ‘she’ll make a lovely mother.’ Ruth smiles noncommittally. She has known Shona a long time. They first met on a dig, twelve years ago. It was on this dig that Erik had his finest hour, the discovery of the Bronze Age henge. Cathbad too had been centre stage, organising protests against the removal of the henge to a museum. Shona had sympathised with the protesters, as had Ruth and Erik too, up to a point. But the henge had been removed, and though there is no trace of it now on the shifting sands of the Saltmarsh the repercussions of that summer are still being felt in many people’s lives. Ruth had once felt betrayed by Shona, beautiful Shona who could have any man she wanted, but her need for a friend had been too strong and they managed to repair their relationship. Now Shona is living with Ruth’s boss, Phil, and expecting his baby. She is blissfully happy and so Ruth, who wonders just how her glamorous friend will cope with broken nights, mother-and-toddler groups and endless reruns of In The Night Garden, keeps her doubts to herself. Shona does seem good with Kate and maybe she’ll take to motherhood with perfect ease. If so, Ruth must remember to pick up some tips.

As an entertainer, though, Shona is quite outclassed by Cathbad, who arrives late and promptly leads the children in a wild game of follow-my-leader: over the sofa, up and down the stairs, rampaging through Ruth’s tiny, overgrown garden.

‘Does he have children of his own?’ asks one of the toddlers’ mothers, picking her offspring out of a bramble bush.

‘One daughter. She must be almost grown up now.’

‘He seems very… energetic.’

‘He is.’

‘How do you know him?’

‘He works at the university.’ Ruth doesn’t feel up to going into her whole history with Cathbad. How she first met him on the henge dig, how he reappeared when a child disappeared on the Saltmarsh. How he keeps appearing whenever her life is in danger. How he has appointed himself as unofficial guardian angel, not just to Ruth and Kate, but also to a markedly ungrateful DCI Harry Nelson.

‘He’s Kate’s godfather,’ she offers.

‘Oh.’ The mother looks relieved, as if Cathbad’s presence has at last been satisfactorily explained. Ruth doesn’t think it’s worth mentioning that Cathbad is also a druid. Thank God he’s not wearing his cloak.

Cathbad proceeds to eat most of the party food and to initiate a game of throwing quavers in the air. Ruth looks at her watch. Five o’clock. Surely they’ll all be going home soon? She decides to open the wine.

‘Not for me,’ says Cathbad, who is performing conjuring tricks with scotch eggs. ‘I’m driving.’

‘You’re high on E numbers anyway.’

‘Just having fun.’

‘It was nice of you to come.’

Cathbad grins. He has a rather piratical face, dark-skinned, with greying hair in a ponytail. ‘All part of my godfatherly duties. As you know, I’m always on the side of chaos. Tell me, Ruth…’ He lowers his voice. ‘What really happened at the museum yesterday?’

Ruth is instantly on her guard. As an expert on forensic archaeology she has been involved in three police investigations. Each time, Cathbad managed to get involved as well, once to devastating effect. She finds it suspicious that he already knows about the death at the museum.

‘How do you know about that?’ she asks, rather sharply.

‘I came for the opening of the coffin and was turned away by PC Plod. I heard that the curator was found dead.’

‘Yes.’ Ruth doesn’t see any point in denying it as the story will be in the papers tomorrow. ‘There’s not necessarily anything suspicious about it though. Poor guy may have had a heart attack.’

Cathbad looks at her. ‘Is that really what you think?’

A typical Cathbad response. Trying to get her to say more than she wants to.

‘I don’t think anything,’ she says, starting to collect squashed sandwiches. There is definitely more food on the table and on the floor than in the kids, though Daisy is slowly working her way through the chocolate fingers. ‘Why are you so interested anyway?’ she asks.

Cathbad throws a cocktail sausage into the air and catches it in his mouth. It’s quite a neat trick. Daisy, the only child still sitting at the table, watches him with awe.

‘Have you heard of the Elginists?’ he asks, when he has finished with the sausage.

‘No,’ says Ruth. ‘Should I have?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Cathbad maddeningly. ‘Should you?’

Ruth is about to tell him not to be so bloody enigmatic when Kate wanders up, holding a balloon and a scotch egg. She hands both to Cathbad before climbing purposefully onto his knee.

‘Dada,’ she says.

It is seven o’clock before everyone goes home. Daisy was sick on the stairs and Kate is spark out on the sofa, still holding a piece of birthday cake. Ruth covers her with a blanket and carries on tidying up. She is aware of two specific concerns fighting their way to the surface of her ever-present amorphous mass of worries (Who will look after Kate if she falls ill or dies? When will she ever have time to write an article or a paper and will Phil fire her if she doesn’t? Why can’t she lose weight? Who is Kerry Katona and what’s happening to the world?). The first is a nagging feeling that Nelson should have rung. She knows what he said about no contact but she just can’t believe that he would ignore his own daughter’s birthday. On Kate’s ‘naming day’ he and Michelle had turned up with an embarrassingly large present. But that was before Michelle had found out. Before Ruth was officially the scarlet woman of North Norfolk. She feels sad for Kate. Everyone should have a present from both parents on their birthday. Even her parents had given presents, though after they found God these did take the form of Children’s Bible Stories or gruesome books about missionaries in China. But even Bible stories are better than nothing. What will she say to Kate when she is old enough to notice this lack? Perhaps she’ll have to pretend that Cathbad is her father.

Cathbad had left without expanding on the Elginists. Elgin composed music didn’t he? No, that was Elgar. Elgin was the guy with the marbles. What could the Elgin Marbles have to do with the Smith Museum in King’s Lynn? As far as she could see the place was full of stuffed cats.

And that brings her to her biggest current worry. Where the hell is Flint? He had taken flight the moment six children descended on him yelling ‘Kitty Kitty!’ Ruth didn’t blame him. She assumed that Flint would lurk in the garden for a bit and be back for his tea. Flint normally eats at six o’clock, the time Ruth usually gets back from work, but though Big Ben was chiming from the radio Flint’s ginger face did not appear at the cat flap. Ruth went into the garden, shaking his biscuit box. ‘Flint! Supper!’ She noticed dimly that a van was parked outside the cottage next door. So the dreaded trendy couple are moving in at last, but at the time Ruth could only think about Flint. Maybe he was chasing birds on the marshes and too busy to think about cat biscuits. But now it is pitch black and still no sign of Ruth’s precious boy.

She knows that she is slightly neurotic about Flint. Once she had another cat, a beautiful little black and white shorthair called Sparky. Sparky had been quieter than Flint and less demanding, but a character none the less, cheerful and independent. Ruth had loved her and, one night, had opened her door to find Sparky on the doorstep with her throat cut. Just thinking about it now makes Ruth feel like crying. Sparky’s death had been part of a whole nightmarish series of events, culminating in murder. Ruth knows that the killing of a human is more serious. She may love her cats but she has a sense of proportion. At the university they are always on the alert against attacks by animal rights groups and, whilst Ruth feels squeamish about the use of animals in experiments, she can see that it might occasionally be necessary. She doesn’t place the rights of animals above those of humans but she does, undoubtedly, prefer her cats to many humans. And now, with Flint not responding to her calls, she feels sick and panicky. He’s a cat, she tells herself. They do what they want. But she can’t help imagining Flint’s mangled body, his lovely marmalade fur clotted with blood…

Stop, she tells herself, scrubbing the stairs for the tenth time. He’s probably having a lovely time chasing voles through the long grass. But Flint is a creature of habit and he is always in by this time, stretched out on the rug, purring like a tumble dryer on spin. She has never met a cat who purrs so loudly. Oh, where is he?

The trouble is, because of Kate, she can’t go out on the marsh and look for him. She walks to the end of the garden and back, listening for the telltale movement in the wind-blown bushes that means Flint is nearby. Nothing. Silence, apart from the sea roaring in the distance and the far-off cry of an owl. The owl. Hecate’s symbol. Ruth has a rather close relationship with the goddess of witchcraft so she prays to her as well as to the other, more macho, God; neither of whom she believes in.

She goes back into the house. Maybe she should carry Kate up to bed but she is sleeping so peacefully it is tempting to leave her where she is for the moment. How can she sleep when Flint is missing, presumed mangled? The room still smells faintly of sick, she’d better clean the stairs again.

The knock on the door makes Ruth stand stock-still, floorcloth in hand. Visitors are rare on the Saltmarsh, and at this hour they rarely bring good news. She’s not scared, she tells people, living in such an isolated place, but she is wary. ‘Who is it?’ she calls.

‘I’ve got a cat,’ shouts an unfamiliar voice. ‘I wondered if it was yours.’

Ruth has the door open in a second. Even a mass murderer would be welcome if he had found Flint.

A squat dark-haired man stands in the doorway, holding Flint in his arms. When the cat sees Ruth he meows accusingly.

‘Flint!’ Joyfully, she reaches out for him. He feels extremely heavy and squeaks when she squeezes him.

‘I see you know each other,’ says the man, sounding amused.

‘Oh yes. Thank you! How did you… Where did you…?’

‘He’d managed to get himself shut in my outhouse. I was moving in and may have left the door open. I’m sorry.’ The man holds out his hand, smiling broadly. ‘I’m your new next-door neighbour, Bob Woonunga.’

‘Oh,’ Ruth puts Flint down and reaches out to shake his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ He doesn’t look like half of a trendy couple, she tells herself.

‘By the way,’ says Bob, ‘there’s a parcel out here for you.’

He hands her a box inexpertly wrapped in pink paper. ‘To Katie,’ Ruth reads. ‘From Dad.’