A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation

We talked about Bishop Augustine. He was really excited about having the bishop’s relics at the museum.’
    Nelson looks back at the letter. On the face of it, there’s nothing too alarming in it, except maybe the mention of ‘bad fortune’ to the Smith family. But Nelson’s eye is drawn to two things: the logo, which he now perceives to be a snake slithering under the moon, and the words,
the Great Snake will have its revenge.
    And he thinks of the room with the coffin and the open window and the single glass case containing the stuffed body of a snake.

CHAPTER 6
     
    Ruth drives to work on Monday feeling that several hurdles have been overcome. Kate’s birthday party (she knows she shouldn’t think of this as a hurdle, but still) went off OK and the new neighbour didn’t turn out to be a trendy sushi-lover or a weird seaweed collector. True, he had looked a little weird at first with his hair in a sort of sumo-wrestler knot and his feet, despite the weather, in leather flip-flops. And the name! She’d had to ask him to repeat it.
    ‘Bob Woonunga.’ He had grinned, showing very white teeth in a dark brown face.
    ‘Oh. That’s … unusual.’
    ‘It’s an Indigenous Australian name,’ he had explained. They were sitting in Ruth’s kitchen by this time, drinking tea. Kate was still asleep on the sofa.
    ‘Safe in dreamland,’ Bob had said. ‘Don’t wake her.’
    Indigenous Australian? Did that mean Aborigine? Were you allowed to say Aborigine anymore? Ruth had settled for: ‘You’re a long way from home.’
    ‘I’m a bit of a wanderer,’ Bob smiled. He had an Aussieaccent which, Ruth realised, was one of the things that made her trust him. Why? Because of
Neighbours
and other warm-hearted Antipodean soap operas? Ruth doesn’t like to admit it but it’s probably true. As a student she had been addicted to
Neighbours
. And now she has a real-life Australian for a neighbour.
    She had wanted to ask more about Mr Woonunga’s wanderings but he had volunteered little except that he had a temporary post at the University of East Anglia, teaching creative writing. Or, as he put it, ‘I’ve got a gig at the uni.’ He has rented the house next door for a year.
    ‘Are you a writer then?’ asked Ruth.
    ‘Poet mostly, but I’ve written a few novels.’
    Ruth was impressed. Like many academics, her ultimate goal is to turn her thesis into a book but so far she hasn’t progressed far beyond the title, ‘Bones, Decomposition and Death in Prehistoric Britain’. To think that someone can be so blasé about their success that they can shrug it away like that. ‘I’ve written a few novels.’ And he must be a successful writer if he’s teaching on the UEA course, even if she hasn’t heard of him.
    ‘What made you choose this place?’ she had asked. ‘It’s quite a way from Norwich.’
    ‘A friend recommended it,’ said Bob, stroking Flint, who seemed to have become surgically attached to his new neighbour. ‘And I like the place. It has good magic.’
    Good magic. Ruth, negotiating the turn into the University of North Norfolk (definitely the poor relation to the prestigious University of East Anglia), wonders why she hadn’t recoiled as she usually does at any mentionof religion or the supernatural. Was it partly because she agreed with Bob Woonunga? Cathbad would say that the Saltmarsh is sacred to the Gods. Erik used to call it a symbolic landscape. Nelson usually refers to it as a dump. For Ruth it is home, but she sometimes wonders why someone born and brought up in South London should be so drawn to such a desolate place. Does
she
feel that there is magic in the shifting sands and secret pools? No. But, although she has experienced both fear and danger on the Saltmarsh, she knows that she wouldn’t live anywhere else. It’s not entirely rational, she’s willing to admit that.
    Ruth’s office is in the Natural Sciences Block which is separated from the main campus by a covered walkway. It’s fairly pleasant in summer, with views over the ornamental lake, but on this grey November morning everything looks forlorn and unloved. The paint is peeling in the lobby and someone has scrawled ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here’ above the main doors. Ruth climbs the two flights of stairs to her office, noticing that the fluorescent lights are flickering again. She’ll have a headache by lunchtime. She opens her door with a key card and sits down at her desk.
    Ruth’s office is tiny,