Dying Fall, A (14 page)

Nelson searches for a parking space in the crowded street. When he lived at home hardly anyone had a car, now they seem to have two or three each. Most of the houses have satellite dishes too. He remembers how thrilling it was when they got their first colour set, just in time for Princess Anne’s wedding.

Somehow Nelson squeezes the Mercedes into a space vacated by a Fiat Panda. Maureen helpfully tells him which way to turn the wheel.

‘It’ll be nice having Ruth and Cuthbert to tea, won’t it,’ she says, as they approach the house. Michelle agrees that it will.

‘You can play with the baby, Harry,’ says Maureen. ‘You’re good with children.’

‘I might be out that day,’ says Nelson.

The forensics laboratory is in an industrial estate near Blackpool airport. It’s a curiously desolate place, a dead end in more ways than one. Ruth drives round and round, trying to find CNN Forensics; all the buildings look the same, square and featureless, and there are very few signposts. Such signs as there are bristle with unfriendly acronyms: DDR Office Furniture, AJM Industrial Fencing, RRB Surgical Appliances. The roads loop round and back again, going nowhere, like a child’s railway track. Eventually, more by luck than judgement, Ruth spots Clayton Henry’s sports car parked outside a long, low building that looks as if it is made out of corrugated iron. CNN Forensics reads the tiny metal sign, pale grey on white. Clearly they are not expecting passing trade.

Clayton Henry gets out of his car and comes to meet her. Gone is the genial host in his Hawaiian shirt. Today he is soberly dressed in a dark suit and looks distinctly uncomfortable, glancing around the empty car-park as if he is expecting to be tracked by the FBI. Ruth thanks him for the party and he acknowledges this with a weak smile.

‘This place is a bit out of the way,’ she says, as they approach the (locked) doors.

‘Yes but they’re very good. The police use them a lot for forensic science services.’

‘But why did Dan use them? I mean, this isn’t a police case, is it?’

‘No.’ Clayton fiddles nervously with his phone. ‘But we wanted to make sure the bones were safe.’

Safe from what? thinks Ruth. But she doesn’t say any more. They press a bell and are admitted.

Inside, the place is spotless; sterile blue and gleaming white. The receptionist, also in antiseptic white, asks them to check in their bags and change into protective clothing.

Clayton is holding what Nelson would probably describe as a handbag, a discreet document case in mulberry leather. He hands it over reluctantly with a quip about it containing explosives. The receptionist smiles coldly. Ruth passes her organiser handbag without comment. If any terrorist finds what he’s looking for in under half an hour, he’s doing better than she ever does.

‘Thank you,’ says the receptionist. She hands them two sets of disposable coveralls. ‘You can change in there.’ She points to a discreet room marked ‘Changing’.

‘Is it unisex?’ asks Clayton.

‘Yes.’

Ruth hates coveralls. She thinks they make her look like a barrage balloon. Add a hairnet and you’ve got instant Ena Sharples. They are given two pairs of gloves each, one long and blue, which pull up over the coat cuffs, the other short and flesh-coloured.

‘It’s a bit excessive, isn’t it?’ says Ruth.

Clayton shrugs. In his paper suit he looks oddly like an ageing toddler. ‘I suppose they’ve got a lot of sensitive stuff here. One spot of DNA in the wrong place . . .’

‘I suppose so.’ Ruth doesn’t like the idea of all Lancashire’s unsolved murders being pinned on her. She pulls the gloves higher and puts on her face mask. Thus attired, they waddle out into the reception area.

A man is waiting for them. He pulls down his mask to say, ‘I’m Terry Durkin, forensic analyst. You’re from the university?’

‘Yes.’ Clayton introduces himself and Ruth.

‘This way please.’

Afterwards, Ruth’s main memory is of swing doors. Door after door, swishing silently as they pass. What was that Bowie song about memory being a swinging door? Dan would have known. The corridors seem endless, blue light and grey carpets. Eventually they reach a row of lifts.

‘It’s on the third floor.’

Ruth hates lifts. This one judders painfully between floors, making her worry that she and Clayton together have exceeded the weight limit. What a way to go. Too fat for a lift. When they reach the third floor, she practically jumps out onto the landing, leaving Clayton and Terry Durkin to fend for themselves.

Durkin ushers them into a small room where a numbered container sits on a metal table.

‘The bones are in there.’

‘Who logged them in?’

‘I did,’ says Durkin. ‘I was on duty that day.’

‘Who brought them in?’

‘It was Guy. Guy Delaware.’

Interesting, thinks Ruth. Does this support Guy’s claim to be closely involved on the project or was he just running Dan’s errands? ‘Do you know what happened to the samples that were taken away for testing?’ she asks.

‘When were they taken?’

Ruth looks at Clayton. ‘At the dig,’ he confirms.

‘I only know what happens in this building,’ intones Durkin. ‘Nothing enters or leaves this building without us knowing.’

‘We’d better not leave anything behind then,’ laughs Clayton.

‘Oh, you’ll leave something behind,’ says Durkin, unsmiling. ‘A hair, a trace of sweat, some fibres. We’ll have your DNA somewhere, you can be sure of that.’ Once again, it strikes Ruth that this is a very high-tech place to store archaeological finds. She asks Clayton if there was any suggestion that the bones were, in fact, modern.

‘No,’ says Clayton. ‘None at all. After all, they were buried inside a sarcophagus. We could date the tomb fairly accurately.’

‘Then why not keep them at the university?’

Clayton looks uncomfortable. He doesn’t meet Ruth’s eye as he says, ‘As I mentioned, there was some bad feeling about the dig.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh . . .’ Clayton seems suddenly completely preoccupied in adjusting his plastic gloves. ‘Waste of resources. That sort of thing.’

‘Bad feeling towards Dan?’ Ruth persists.

Clayton looks up, his plump face shocked. ‘No! Dan didn’t have an enemy in the world.’

That’s not what the police think, though. Ruth remembers her conversation with Nelson. The police think that someone killed Dan. That that someone may well be at Pendle University and may well be the same someone who is sending Ruth texts, warning her to stay away from these very bones. Well—she squares her shoulders as she takes the box from Durkin—she can’t be scared that easily. Well she can, but that’s not the point. The point is that she’s here despite being scared. She starts to lay the bones out on the examination table.

She starts to arrange the skeleton in correct anatomical order, looking for any distinguishing marks—disease, malnutrition, trauma—anything that would help her create a picture of the person who died so many years ago. At first sight the bones look to be those of an adult male, which is a relief, whatever Clayton says. They also look old, which may not mean anything. Recent skeletons are usually fairly obvious but it’s often not easy to distinguish between a body that died fifty years ago and one that has lain in the earth for hundreds of years. So many factors can affect the preservation of bones.

Clayton Henry watches her closely but does not attempt to help. After all, this isn’t his area of expertise. Durkin also stands respectfully in the background. The room is cold; it is obviously kept at a mortuary-like temperature.

Ruth starts by examining the skull, observing the pronounced nuchal crest which confirms that the skeleton is male. Then she looks at the teeth. Teeth are a forensic archaeologist’s best friend. They show signs of age, nutrition and diet. Horizontal ridges can indicate periods of arrested development such as illness or malnutrition. Teeth also carry an indelible record of the time and place when the adult teeth first erupted. Bones renew themselves; teeth do not.

Ruth looks at the upper jaw for a long time, then she picks up the lower jaw, which has become detached. This she examines for so long that Clayton Henry starts to shift from foot to foot.

‘Found anything interesting, Ruth?’

Ruth beckons him over. ‘See the teeth in the upper jaw? They’re really ground down.’

Clayton peers over. ‘Yes. Shows our bloke must have been a good age. Or else he was just a worrier.’ He laughs heartily.

‘But look at the lower jaw.’

‘What?’

‘The teeth aren’t ground down nearly as much.’

‘How can that be? Wouldn’t they grind against each other?’

‘Exactly,’ says Ruth.

‘What do you mean?’

Ruth puts the two halves of the jaw side by side on the table. ‘They don’t fit,’ she says. ‘These are from two different heads.’

‘I don’t understand,’ says Clayton Henry for the umpteenth time. They are sitting in a cafe next to a derelict funfair. It’s the nearest place they could find. You couldn’t imagine anyone actually choosing the cafe for anything other than convenience. The owner looks as if she lost all hope in about 1953 and the air is fuggy with chip oil and steam. Clayton, in his dark suit, looks as out of place as a food inspector. He looks sadly into his tea, which is grey with a sort of beige scum on top.

Ruth sips her coffee, which oddly also tastes of chips. ‘There are two explanations,’ she says. ‘Either there were parts of two skeletons in the sarcophagus, laid out so as to look like one body, or some of Dan’s bones were switched, either at the dig or at the lab.’

Clayton shakes his head. ‘Dan would have noticed if there were parts of two different skeletons,’ he says. ‘I mean, he wasn’t a bones expert but he would have noticed the teeth. He looked at the skull for a long time, trying to age the bones. He would have noticed.’

‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘He would have.’ She thinks of Dan, the star of the UCL archaeology department, and feels suddenly very angry that anyone could have considered playing such an obvious trick on him.

‘Let’s think about it,’ she says. She scrabbles in her organiser handbag for notebook and pencil. Ruth likes lists; it is something she has in common with DCI Harry Nelson. ‘Who was at the dig on the day that the bones were excavated? I assume it was done over one day?’

‘Yes. Dan was very particular about that. Every bone had to be recorded.’

‘Where are those records now?’

Clayton shrugs helplessly. ‘I don’t know.’

On Dan’s laptop, Ruth supposes, along with his notes and the novel. But there may be hard copies somewhere in the department. She resolves to look.

‘You’re sure he took the samples for testing at the dig?’ she asks.

‘Yes, I saw him take soil samples and he also put aside some teeth and small bones to be sent off for analysis. He bagged them up and put them in his car, I think.’

So the test samples will actually have been taken from the original skeleton, thinks Ruth.

‘What about photographs?’ she asks. ‘He would have photographed the skeleton when it was fully exposed, before excavation.’

‘There were official photos,’ says Clayton. ‘Taken by the county archaeologist, I think. And Dan took pictures on his phone.’

Bloody Dan, thinks Ruth. Why did he have to be so high tech? She takes photographs on digs with a digital camera but she also always does a sketch in her notebook and takes copious notes. And notebooks, unlike mobile phones, tend not to go missing. She says as much to Clayton.

‘Oh, I love technology,’ he says unexpectedly. ‘I’m a real gadget boy, just got the new iPhone 4.’

Ruth stops him before he can get into one of those iPhone conversations that their owners think are so fascinating. ‘So,’ she says, getting out her (low tech) notebook. ‘Who was there that day?’

Clayton crumples up his face in thought, looking more like a peevish baby than ever. ‘Some people from the local archaeology society,’ he says. ‘I could get their names for you. Susan Chow, the county archaeologist. I was there, and a couple of other people from the department.’

‘Who?’

Clayton takes a sip of tea, grimaces and pushes the cup away. ‘Guy was there, I think. Yes, Elaine and Guy. They were very interested in the excavation.’

‘Did you actually see Dan box up the bones?’

‘Yes. We were going to take them to the university but Guy thought . . .’

He stops.

‘What?’ asks Ruth. ‘What did Guy think?’

‘He thought they would be safer at the lab so he drove them there himself.’

When Ruth gets back to Lytham, Beach Row is deserted apart from a blonde woman walking her dog. Cathbad is out with Kate. He has left a message saying that they wanted to see the lifeboat museum, for all the world as if Kate has expressed a keen interest in marine rescue. Still, Ruth is grateful that Cathbad is prepared to do so much babysitting. What’s more, he seems to enjoy it. All in all, living with Cathbad is not as difficult as she feared. Ruth hasn’t lived with anyone since Peter. Max’s weekends don’t really count, though by Sunday Ruth often catches herself looking forward to being on her own again, free to have Flint in bed with her or to watch TV in her pyjamas. But Cathbad is different. He’s not a boyfriend so she doesn’t really care how he sees her. Also, for someone who claims to be outside the normal rules of human behaviour, he’s surprisingly domesticated. He gets up early, goes for a dawn walk and then is back in time to make Ruth a cup of tea and watch breakfast TV with Kate. For the first time since Kate’s birth, Ruth is actually able to have a lie-in. And, if instead of dozing peacefully, she lies in bed worrying about Nelson, Max, Dan and mysterious text messages, then that’s her own fault, isn’t it?

Now Ruth puts some shopping down on the round kitchen table. It’s one o’clock and she wonders whether Cathbad and Kate will already have had their lunch. Should she make a salad, just in case? Put on some potatoes to bake? She is trying to take her turn with the cooking but Cathbad is so much better at it than she is. Last night he made a wonderful vegetarian lasagne and, when she opens the fridge, she sees that another delicious dish is already in there, neatly covered in clingfilm. Really, Cathbad would make someone a wonderful husband.