A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation

in the world. Her schooldays were one long drama of tears and tantrums, professions of love and hate. Caroline hadn’t gone to university, she’d travelled the world instead and come back with a whole new list of things to care about. That’s all fine, but why does she look at him as if he’s the one responsible for the world’s ills? He didn’t wipe out the bloody American Indians, for God’s sake. And why hasn’t Caroline got a boyfriend? Always hanging out with that shaven-haired girl from the university. Maybe she’s … But Danforth’s imagination doesn’t stretch that far.
    He sighs and goes downstairs to make some cocoa. He’ll put a swig of brandy in it too.
    Randolph is in a bar, a very different drinking establishment from Caroline’s. The lighting is subdued, the ambiance expensive. Two burly bouncers at the door stop passing riff-raff getting further than the gold ropes. Randolph drinks a glass of champagne without noticing, as if it’s medicine. The first glass is free, to soften the fact that the rest of the drinks cost the equivalent of a two-bedroomed house (with garage). Randolph doesn’t really notice the prices either. There’s plenty in the bank,and if there isn’t, what are overdrafts for? He’s thinking about Clary, his current girlfriend. She’s developed an awful habit of ringing him up on a Monday night. Monday nights are meant to be sacrosanct. And she’s been making ominous noises about meeting his parents. Sunday lunch at home with Mummy and Daddy, Dad bellyaching about the cost of hay, Caroline brooding on the world’s wrongs, horse shit all over the place. It’s just not going to happen.
    ‘Drinking alone?’ The question comes from a young man in his twenties, vaguely Russian-looking, with a shaven head and definite biceps.
    ‘Not now,’ says Randolph.
    Romilly Smith downs her beer in one gulp. She’d like another but she has to drive home and, besides, she needs her head to deal with this lot.
    ‘Violence has to be justifiable,’ she says. ‘I’m not against it. I just think we need to choose our moment. And we have to make a case for it.’
    Her audience, two men and a woman, all in their twenties and dressed in various items of camouflage, look at her resentfully. Romilly, in her white trousers and grey cashmere jumper, could not look more out of place in the dingy pub with her dingy companions, but there is an air of authority about her, an indefinable sense of superiority that makes the woman address her almost respectfully as she says, ‘Who do we have to make the case to?’
    ‘To whom,’ corrects Romilly kindly. ‘To the public, of course. And to the press. Something like this can’t behushed up and we wouldn’t want it to be. We need the publicity.’
    ‘What does it matter what the press think?’ says one of the men. ‘Bunch of Tory tossers.’
    Romilly sighs. The group are really distressingly stupid sometimes. Not that she’s got any time for Tories. She was in the Socialist Workers’ Party before this lot were even
born
.
    ‘It matters because they control public opinion,’ she says. ‘We have to be clever. We have to play the game. We have to spin things our way.’
    ‘Nothing matters,’ says the woman mutinously. ‘Nothing matters except the cause.’
    She sounds like Caroline in one of her sulky moods, thinks Romilly, except that Caroline would never have the guts for Direct Action. This group, for all their faults, don’t lack guts.
    ‘Of course dear,’ she says soothingly. ‘Nothing matters except the cause.’
    Danforth makes cocoa in the empty kitchen. The time on the stainless steel range says 00.15. Fifteen minutes past midnight. Though the kitchen is deserted, it isn’t quite silent. Various machines whirr and hum. The dishwasher is still ploughing through its umpteenth cycle. Ecologically unsound, says Caroline. She does all her washing up by hand. Well, she’s welcome to it. Danforth rinses a cup, mindlessly rubbing a mark from one of the shiny red units. He’s never been keen on them himself but Romilly insisted. He’d prefer an Aga like his parentshad, mismatched cupboards, an old oak table. But their kitchen lies in ruins in the grounds of the park, weeds growing through the sandstone tiles where he used to lie on a summer’s day, watching the ants march under the scullery door.
    The milk starts to boil and Danforth removes it from the heat. A horse neighs outside, another answers. Danforth pauses,