The Janus Stone

CHAPTER 23

‘What is it?’

‘It’s an exhibit,’ says Nelson, ‘from the museum. Just like the baby.’

Ruth had called Nelson immediately and he was with her in ten minutes. He is wearing a tracksuit and his hair is wet. ‘I was at the gym,’ he says, seeing her questioning glance.

‘I thought you hated the gym.’

‘It was Michelle’s idea. We go before work. Not bad when you get used to it. I like the pool. A swim sets you up for the day.’

‘If you say so.’

Nelson is kneeling in her front garden, examining the calf which, she now sees, is stuffed. Close up, it looks less sinister and more pathetic, its fur threadbare in places, its four eyes glassy. The second head is really just a protrusion from the neck with rudimentary ears and muzzle. The eyes have obviously been added by the taxidermist to contribute to the freak effect. Ruth feels sorry for it but she still wishes that it hadn’t turned up on her doorstep. Is it an offering from whoever was lurking outside her house last night?

‘The Two-Headed Calf of Aylsham,’ says Nelson, straightening up.

‘What?’

‘Like I said, it’s from the museum. They’ve got a collection of stuffed animals. Apparently this little chap was quite famous in Victorian times. Used to travel round with one of these fairs exhibiting freaks and suchlike.’

‘But how did the Two-Headed Calf of Aylsham end up on my doorstep?’ asks Ruth, aware that she sounds both petulant and terrified.

Nelson shrugs but his face is sombre. ‘I don’t know. I’ll get back on to the museum today. I was only there yesterday.’

‘Were you? Why?’

‘Asking about the model baby. Seems that someone likes leaving these things for you to find.’

But why, thinks Ruth. And why does she get the feeling that the person, whoever it is, is getting nearer and nearer, is becoming angrier and angrier. Aloud she says, ‘Would you like breakfast? A cup of coffee?’

‘No thanks. I’d better be getting on. I’ll take Chummy with me.’ And, pulling on plastic gloves, he staggers off down the path, carrying the two-headed calf.

Ruth watches him go. The sight is made more surreal by the fact that the mist is still clinging to the ground, obliterating everything up to waist height. Nelson’s torso, with the weird two-headed shape beside it, seems to be floating on a white cloud. Ruth shivers. The morning air is cold and she is wearing only a jumper pulled on hastily over her pyjamas. She is sure that her hair is standing up wildly and her face feels puffy from sleep. She must have presented a nice contrast to Michelle, whom Nelson would have left at the gym, her toned body encased in a designer tracksuit. Oh well. She pads over the wet grass towards the cottage. She’ll have a shower and get dressed. She is due at the hospital at ten. It’s time for her next scan.

But, before she can get to the bathroom, her phone rings. It’s Nelson ringing from his car. ‘I’m thinking it’s not safe for you to be alone in the house with this nutter out there. Have you got anywhere you can go?’

‘No,’ says Ruth flatly. Once, under similar circumstances, she stayed with Shona. Never again.

Nelson sighs. ‘Then I’ll send someone to sleep at the cottage.’

‘No!’

‘I have to, Ruth. You’re in danger.’

‘All right. As long as it’s not Clough.’

He laughs. ‘I’ll send my best WPC.’

Ruth puts down the phone feeling both irritated and obscurely comforted. She stumps back upstairs and goes into the bathroom. She feels exhausted already and it’s not nine o’clock yet. Just as she steps into the shower, the phone rings again. Bloody Nelson. Probably just ringing to tell her not to slip on the soap. She considers leaving it but the fear that the call might be bad news (something happening to one of her parents) makes her descend the stairs again.

It’s Max. ‘Hi, Ruth. Hope I’m not ringing too early. Just wondered how you were feeling, you know, after Saturday.’

Was it only Saturday night that she was in hospital? It seems weeks ago. ‘I’m fine,’ she says.

‘I was wondering… about your Norwich site…’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, could I come over and have a look? You mentioned that you’d found some Roman pottery…’

Ruth is silent for a moment. She knows that she invited Max to visit the Woolmarket Street site but she hardly expected him to take her up on the offer. The Roman finds have hardly been significant and the building work is starting again today. Why does Max suddenly want to see the site? Could it possibly be because he wants to see her again?

‘I’ve got an appointment at ten,’ she says, ‘but I could meet you on the site at eleven thirty.’

‘Perfect. I’ll see you then.’

This time she runs back upstairs and sings in the shower.

The Two-Headed Calf of Aylsham causes quite a stir at the station.

‘See you’ve got a new pet, boss.’ This is Clough.

‘How disgusting.’ Leah.

‘What’s it doing here?’ Judy.

‘Is it from the museum?’ Tanya, bright-eyed and eager.

Nelson puts the calf in the incident room. He doesn’t want it in his office; the glassy stare is beginning to freak him out.

‘Cloughie! I want you to take this thing back to the museum and find out how it got out.’

‘Maybe it just fancied a walk?’

Nelson ignores this. ‘Find out who had access to the exhibits. Tanya!’

‘Yes?’

‘I need you to look after Sir Roderick Spens. He’s coming in today for a DNA test.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Judy, I need you to stay with Ruth Galloway for a few days.’

Judy looks put out for some reason. He hopes she isn’t going moody on him. ‘Why?’ she asks.

‘Because I think someone is going to try to kill her.’

This scan seems very different from the first. Ruth knows what to expect and, having had a scan after her accident, she feels pretty sure that the baby is all right. She can even feel him moving now, little butterfly motions rippling across her stomach, quite unlike any other sensation she has ever experienced. ‘It feels as if something’s moving about inside me,’ she had said in answer to Shona’s query. ‘But that’s what it is,’ Shona had replied.

She is ushered into the room with the ultrasound. They are running late as usual and she begins to worry that she won’t get to the site for eleven thirty. The technician rubs gel onto her stomach and, miraculously soon, there are the grey, cloudy insides of her womb. Ruth leans forward.

‘There’s the baby’s legs. Long legs.’ The technician presses some buttons. ‘There’s a good one of the face.’ Ruth looks and sees only overlapping shapes, like a Cubist painting. The technician points, ‘There’s the nose.’ And then Ruth sees an actual profile: forehead, tiny nose, lips, chin. She even thinks she can discern an expression, stern and serious.

‘Do you want to know the sex?’ asks the technician.

Ruth is surprised quite how much she does want to know. Somehow her relationship with this creature, this person, has become such that she can’t not know.

‘Oh… yes please.’

The technician points. ‘We can never be one hundred per cent certain but I’m pretty sure it’s a girl.’

Ruth stares. ‘A girl?’

‘Well, sometimes the tackle’s hidden, if you know what I mean, but we’re getting a pretty good full-frontal here. I think you’ve got a girl.’

A girl. A daughter.

Nelson is having a trying morning. Clough seems to be taking a hell of a long time at the museum. Probably stuffing his face at the café. Or maybe he’s met up with Trace and they’re having a cosy chat about the Romans. Then Roderick Spens arrives, all confused charm and long stories, and has to be coaxed through the testing routine. Judy would have handled it better, thinks Nelson, watching as Tanya tries to shepherd the old man out of the office. Firm but polite, that’s what you need to be. But he’s never been that good at the touchy-feely stuff himself.

Then, to cap it all, Whitcliffe pays him a visit.

‘Morning, Harry. Just popped in to see how the Woolmarket Street case was progressing. Had a call from Edward Spens. Seems he’s a bit worried about his old dad being involved.’

Typical, thinks Nelson. Edward Spens is just the sort of man to complain to the boss. The warmer feelings engendered by Spens’ kindness to his father are quickly dispelled.

‘Sir Roderick’s here now,’ he says. He has a feeling Whitcliffe already knows this. ‘We’re seeing if there’s a DNA match with the body. One of my WPCs is looking after him.’

‘Is it likely there’ll be a match?’

Nelson explains about Annabelle Spens but Whitcliffe still looks dubious. ‘Clutching at straws a bit, aren’t you, Harry?’

‘Perhaps.’ Whitcliffe calls Nelson Harry but there is no way that Nelson can call him Gerry. He’s not about to call him ‘sir’ though.

Whitcliffe is about to say something but Nelson’s phone suddenly buzzes with a text message. Nelson picks it up. ‘Excuse me.’

The message is from Ruth. Three words. ‘It’s a girl!’

Nelson stares. In the background Whitcliffe is droning on. ‘Important local businessman… relations with the wider public… care and respect for the elderly…’ But Nelson can only think about Ruth’s text. A girl. Another daughter. He can hardly believe it. Ruth had been so sure she was having a boy and, somehow, he had believed it too. Michelle is so ultra-feminine it had always seemed impossible that she could give birth to a male. But Ruth, tough and independent, he had been sure that she would have a son. Another daughter. Well, he needs no practice in loving a daughter.

‘Harry?’

‘Yes. Yes. Of course. Consider it done.’

Whitcliffe looks at him curiously and Nelson wonders what he is agreeing to. But the answer seems to please his boss who swaggers out of the office in high good humour.

As soon as the door has closed behind him, Nelson rings Ruth. ‘Ruth! Is this true?’

She laughs. ‘Apparently so. We’re having a girl.’

‘But you were so sure it was a boy.’

To Nelson’s irritation, he sees that Sir Roderick Spens has wandered in, closely followed by Tanya. Nelson waves a hand for them to leave.

‘I know but the radiographer was pretty certain.’

‘Another girl. My God.’

‘Are you pleased?’

He laughs. Of course he isn’t pleased, Ruth’s pregnancy could be about to blow his marriage sky-high but, on another level, of course he is pleased. He is delighted.

‘Where are you?’ he asks.

‘On my way to the Woolmarket Street site.’

‘I’ll meet you there.’ He looks at his watch, it is twenty past eleven. ‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’

And he rings off before Ruth has a chance to say that she is meeting Max.

The site is busy again. Diggers trundle to and fro and a large skip is blocking the entrance. Max, wearing a hard hat, is standing by the foreman’s hut looking glum.

‘I didn’t think the building work would be so advanced.’

‘I think they’re making up for lost time,’ says Ruth. ‘Nelson says that Edward Spens is desperate to get the work finished.’

‘Typical.’

Ruth looks curiously at Max. ‘Do you know him then?’

‘We were at university together.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, we both read history at Sussex.’

Ruth thinks about the suave figure she met on the site.

It’s hard to connect him to Max but, come to think of it, they must be about the same age.

‘How come he ended up running a building firm?’ she asks.

‘It’s the family business. He always said his dad would insist on it.’

‘Are you still in touch with him?’

Max looks slightly sheepish. ‘Just Friends Reunited, that sort of thing.’

Ruth loathes Friends Reunited. She has kept in touch with the few people she liked at school and university. As far as she is concerned, the less the rest know about her the better.

‘Come on,’ she says, ‘I’ll show you round.’

The foreman is obviously irritated to find archaeologists under his feet again but he agrees to let Ruth show Max over the site ‘as long as they keep out of the way’. But, when Ruth goes to find the grave under the door, it has disappeared. The black and white tiles have been broken up and the ground is a seething mass of mud. No walls or divisions can be seen, just a level stretch of ploughed-up earth.

The well is still intact. The diggers haven’t got this far but they are looming. Ruth can see their mechanical claws churning up the garden, the vegetable patch, the tree with the swing, the cucumber frame. Soil and rubble pour into the skips. Who knows how many artefacts are there – medieval, Roman, Victorian? All destroyed to make room for seventy-five luxury apartments, each with en-suite bathroom.

Max kneels and looks into the well. ‘Design looks Roman.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Heads have been found in Roman wells haven’t they?’ asks Ruth.

‘Sometimes,’ Max replies cautiously. ‘At Odell in Bedfordshire they found a Roman skull deliberately inserted into the lining of a well. Head cults are more Celtic though. And holy wells were common in medieval times. St Thomas’s well at Windleshaw was said to have sprung up where a priest was beheaded.’

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.