A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation

wondering what’s happening down at the docks. If there’s anything to report he’ll soon hear from Tanya and Tom Henty; he might as well wait in the comfort of his own sitting room. But still he sits in his office, drinking cold coffee and reading about pulmonary haemorrhage. The truth is that he doesn’t want to go home.
    When Nelson had agreed not to see Ruth any more, he and Michelle had fallen into each other’s arms and into bed. It was the most emotional experience of his life. He had felt full of tenderness for Michelle, full of gratitude and remorse. At that moment, he would have promised her anything. But the euphoria hadn’t lasted. Michelle had not seemed able to stop talking about Ruth. ‘What was she like in bed? Was she better than me? Whatwas it like sleeping with someone so fat?’ ‘Don’t,’ Nelson had begged. ‘Can’t we just forget it?’ But that, of course, was impossible. Now, six months later, Michelle fluctuates between tearful intensity (‘Promise you’ll never leave me’) and seeming indifference. Last night she had gone out with some of the girls at work and not returned until midnight. He had rung her several times but her phone was switched off. When she’d finally got in, he’d been sitting up waiting for her. In fact, he’d been wondering whether to call up a squad car. ‘I didn’t think you’d be interested,’ she’d said when he asked where she’d been. She had flounced off upstairs as if he’d been in the wrong, but later, in bed, had sobbed in his arms and asked if he thought she was too old to have another baby. Wondering which wife will be waiting for him at home – the frosty businesswoman or the reproachful angel – he decides to stay on and do some more work. He’ll find out some more about these Elginist people for a start.
    Nelson is bad at technology but can just about manage to use Google. Soon the screen is full of pictures of marble horses, grinning skulls, totemic objects. There’s the logo again, the crescent moon with the snake beneath it. The Elginists, he reads, are dedicated to the return of cultural artefacts to their countries of origin. There is a bit about the Elgin Marbles and a whole site dedicated to someone called the Amesbury Archer, a Bronze Age skeleton found near Stonehenge whose return is demanded by a group of druids. Nelson immediately thinks of Cathbad. What had Tom Henty said? That Cathbad had wanted to talkto him about ‘skulls and the unquiet dead’. Could Cathbad be mixed up with these people? It seems only too likely. Nelson, who enjoys what can only be described as a friendship with Cathbad, decides to speak to him as soon as possible.
    But most of the hits come up with the words ‘Aboriginal remains’. The Elginists have been active around the country, demanding the return of Aboriginal relics held in private collections. In some cases, it seems they have been successful, and the internet provides pictures of smiling Aboriginal chiefs in animal-skin cloaks embracing embarrassed-looking museum officials. But there are many reports of collectors refusing to hand over their ill-gotten spoils, of threatening behaviour, bitter recriminations. Nelson can’t see that the police have been involved but he’ll check the files. Could this group, who seem both organised and determined, be involved in Neil Topham’s death?
    ‘Boss?’ Judy Johnson is standing in the doorway.
    ‘I thought you’d gone home,’ says Nelson. ‘You look knackered.’ He realises that this is hardly tactful but Judy
does
look exhausted, grey-faced and almost shell-shocked.
    ‘I’m going in a minute,’ she says, ‘but I got the report from SOCO on the Smith Museum. There were some fingerprints found at the scene so I thought I’d run them through our database, see if there were any matches.’
    ‘And were there?’
    ‘Just one.’
    She puts a print-out on Nelson’s desk. It informs him that fingerprints found at the scene match the prints of one Michael Malone.
    Michael Malone. Alias Cathbad.

CHAPTER 8
     
    The Newmarket pub is on a crossroads leading to King’s Lynn via one fork, Downham Market via the other. Rumour has it that there was once a terrible stagecoach accident at the junction, and even today Danforth Smith’s horses sidle and spook if they pass this way. Stories of spectral carriages and ghostly horses are almost certainly unsubstantiated but, nevertheless, there is something unsettling about the location of the