A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation

she feels about him anyway. She conjures him up: tall, curly-haired, slightly watchful. She met Max when he was excavating the Roman Villa near Swaffham but their relationship soon became overshadowed by other events, including murder. Cathbad was involved in that case too. He really does seem to have discovered the art of omnipresence.
    Except today. Cathbad isn’t answering his phone. This is unusual because, although he claims that using mobile phones causes brain cancer, he’s usually pretty quick to answer a text or voicemail. Where can he be?
    Ruth puts aside the bones and opens the box containing the skulls. There are three of them, more or less intact.Beautiful, Danforth had said, and, in a way, Ruth can see what he means. A human skull is a gift to an archaeologist, telling so much, free from the trappings of flesh. But it’s also a person, as Ruth always tells her students, and three people, three real people who were born and died thousands of miles away, have ended up with their heads locked in the basement of a Norfolk museum. Why? How?
    The fourth object in the box makes Ruth catch her breath. It’s the top half of a skull, the iliac crest, scooped out to resemble a bowl. This must be the famous water carrier. What sort of person would want to drink out of someone else’s head? She turns the object round in her hands, wondering about its owner. Without carbon-14 dating it’s almost impossible for her to tell how old it is, or even if it belonged to a man or a woman. The complete skulls are easier, the sloping brow-ridge and the pronounced nuchal crest at the back tell her that they are all male. One has scars which may be indicative of syphilis. But it is the last skull that makes her sit back on her heels, as shocked as if she had suddenly come face-to-face with Smith Senior and his grave-robbing friends.
    The skull has cut marks all over it. Clean cut marks unhealed, which shows that they were made at the point of death or soon after. The position of the cut marks indicate that the head has had the skin cut from it. It has been scalped.

CHAPTER 10
     
    Cathbad’s silence is easily explained. He is helping the police with their enquiries. Or rather, he is entertaining Nelson and Judy in his caravan on the beach at Blakeney. Cathbad seems determined to keep the occasion social, offering them tea and brownies, enquiring after Michelle and the girls. Nelson answers brusquely. He’s annoyed with Cathbad for putting him in this position. Why the hell did his fingerprints have to be found at the scene? Does the man get everywhere?
    He doesn’t think that Cathbad killed Neil Topham but he’s mixed up in it somehow. He was at the museum that day and, as for the Elginists, they have Cathbad’s name written all over them. Cathbad loves nothing more than a fight with authority and this one would be right up his street.
    ‘I expect you know why we’re here,’ is Nelson’s opening gambit.
    ‘I’m sure you’ll tell me,’ replies Cathbad genially.
    Progress through the caravan is difficult. Objects hang from the ceiling and there is furniture everywhere, mostlydraped in material so that it is hard to know whether it’s a chair or a table that you’ve just fallen over. Nelson gets tangled up in a dreamcatcher made of seashells and swats at it wildly. It breaks.
    ‘Sorry,’ he says, not sounding it.
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ says Cathbad. ‘I can make another.’
    ‘Do you sell them to gullible tourists?’ asks Nelson, landing with relief onto a bench seat.
    ‘No, I give them to special people in my life,’ says Cathbad. He looks at Judy, who looks away.
    Nelson, who is the not-so-proud owner of two of Cathbad’s dreamcatchers, gets straight down to business.
    ‘We found your prints at the museum. Are you going to tell us what’s going on?’
    Cathbad settles himself in a tall wizard’s chair. He smiles. Nelson glowers at him. He distrusts Cathbad’s smile.
    ‘I was in the museum on Saturday,’ he says. ‘You know that. I came for the opening of Bishop Augustine’s coffin.’
    ‘But how come your prints were found in the Local History Room, which was closed to the public?’
    Cathbad sighs. He turns to Judy. ‘Have you ever been to the Smith Museum?’ he asks her. ‘Fascinating collection.’
    Judy is fiddling with her phone. She looks tired again today, thinks Nelson, and she hardly spoke on the drive from the station. Christ, he hopes she isn’t pregnant.
    Judy meets