A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation

too). They must look strange but they probably do look like a couple. Jesus wept, what a way to spend his birthday.
    ‘There’s a lot of charlie around. It’s good stuff, clean, but no one knows where it’s coming from.’
    ‘I don’t believe you.’
    ‘Honest to God.’ Jimmy found God while serving time for dealing. He credits the Almighty for keeping him out of prison for the past three years but he would do better to thank Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson, who has got him off a number of smaller charges in return for information. And now Nelson is impatient; he is sure Olson must know something. He is close to a number of dealers, including a deeply unpleasant character known as the Vicar. Yet here’s the market being flooded by cheap foreign cocaine and no one knows anything about it. Call themselves businessmen.
    Jimmy gets up to put water on the hot coals. The room is filled with steam and Nelson catches a whiff of Jimmy’s body odour over the smell of pine and lemongrass. He starts to feel slightly sick.
    ‘Do you know a character called Neil Topham?’ asks Nelson.
    He can’t see Jimmy very well but he’s sure that he’s looking shifty.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I ask the questions.’
    ‘I think I may have heard the name. He’s a customer.’
    ‘Of yours?’
    ‘No! I swear to God, Inspector Nelson, I haven’t dealt for years. No, a customer of a friend of mine.’
    ‘Good customer?’
    ‘I think so. Why? What’s he done?’
    ‘He’s dead.’
    Jimmy’s mouth opens in a silent O.
    ‘Would your dealer friend have anything to do with that? Has he been hanging round the Smith Museum?’
    Jimmy starts violently then tries to conceal the fact by jumping to his feet.
    ‘Getting a bit hot in here,’ he says.
    Nelson pushes Jimmy back down into his seat. He looms over the cringing younger man. The woman, who has reappeared in the window, beats a hasty retreat.
    ‘What do you know about the Smith Museum?’
    ‘Me? Nothing. What would a bloke like me know about a museum?’ Olson reminds Nelson of a character in a classic TV serial, years ago. Uriah something. Always banging on about being humble, but evil through and through.
    ‘Why did you jump like a cat on hot bricks when I mentioned it?’ The simile is all too apt. Nelson feels the sweat running down his back. He feels more nauseous than ever.
    Jimmy slumps forward on the slatted bench. Nelson sits opposite, breathing hard.
    ‘It’s just something the Vicar said.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Well I met him one day down at the docks and I said how are you Vicar, friendly like, and he said he’d been to the Smith Museum. I thought he was joking because museums are for kids, aren’t they? So I says what were you doing at a museum Vicar, and he says I went to see a lady.’
    ‘A lady?’
    ‘Yeah. So I says, still thinking he was joking, was she in a glass case, like she was a mummy or something, and he says no she was flesh and blood alright.’
    ‘Nothing else?’
    ‘No. On my mother’s life.’
    ‘Your mother’s dead.’
    ‘On her grave then.’
    Nelson can’t stand it anymore. He pushes open the wooden door and heads for the showers. He stands under the blissfully cold water until he is sure that Olson has gone. Then he dives into the tepid pool and swims non-stop for twenty minutes.
    Nelson is drinking overpriced cappuccino in the hotel lounge when he gets the call from Clough.
    ‘Hi boss. You home yet?’
    Nelson has told the team that he’s going home early so that he can have a meal out with Michelle. He knows they are taking bets on whether he’ll come back to the office.
    ‘Almost. Have you got anything for me?’
    ‘Well, you know you said to check up on the Smith family, see if there were any convictions, anything like that?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Well I’ve got one. A conviction for criminal damage. Part of an animal rights demonstration.’
    Nelson thinks of a pale intense face fringed by dark hair. ‘Was it the daughter? Caroline?’
    ‘No.’ Clough is savouring the moment. ‘Romilly Maud Smith, aged fifty-five. Lady Smith to you.’
    ‘The wife?’
    ‘That’s right. Looks like Lady Smith was part of a groupthat broke into a pharmaceutical company to protest about animal testing.’
    ‘Jesus! Wonder what Danforth Smith thought about that.’
    ‘He must have known. It was in the papers. The
Evening News
described her as a “mother figure” to the group. Her code name was Big Mama.’
    ‘What did she