A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation

tea,’ she says.
    ‘You’re soaked through.’
    She ushers them into the sitting room. Clough stabs away at his phone but can’t get a signal; Judy has lost hers. She collapses in a chair, feeling that nothing much matters any more.
    ‘How did you find me?’ she asks Clough.
    He looks up. ‘You sent me a text, didn’t you? I was checking my phone every few minutes. Thought there might be news about the boss. I never thought you’d come down here on your own like Nancy bloody Drew. Jesus, Johnson, how could you be so stupid?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ says Judy. ‘I thought I’d solved the case. I thought I could do it all myself.’ She tells him about the mules. Clough whistles silently. ‘Of course, half the horses come from the Middle East. The perfect cover. Brilliant.’
    ‘Glad you think so,’ says a voice from the doorway. Len Harris is standing there, next to Caroline. Both are holding guns.
    The voices have started. Voices coming from the sea. Nelson knows that he mustn’t listen to them. If you listen, you are lost. If you answer the knock at the door, you are lost. He sets his mind against the soft, beguiling whispers from the deep. Michelle, Ruth, Laura, Rebecca, his mother.Always women’s voices. He mustn’t give way to them. He must keep walking along the beach, walking beside Cathbad. One foot in front of the other. But it’s hard, the hardest thing he has ever had to do.
    ‘This way,’ says Caroline politely. An effect slightly ruined by the gun, which she is pointing directly at Judy’s chest.
    ‘You’re making a big mistake,’ says Clough, blusteringly, to Len Harris.
    ‘No, you’ve made the mistake,’ says Harris. He doesn’t sound out of breath at all. Has he just run through the woods or did he have a car waiting outside the gates? It must have been Caroline, Caroline who locked the gates and then opened them again for Harris, driving him round to her house as calmly and efficiently as a taxi. Caroline, Trace’s friend, whom Clough said they could trust.
    Harris is smiling now, his leathery gnome’s face transformed into something far less benign. A goblin or a troll perhaps. ‘You wandered into the yard,’ he is saying, ‘and, sadly, became the victim of a tragic accident.’
    He looks at Caroline. ‘The walker?’ she says.
    ‘Perfect.’
    ‘This way,’ he points the gun. Judy and Clough have no choice but to follow. Clough considers turning on Harris and trying to force the gun out of his hand, but the trouble is, if it works, Caroline will probably shoot Judy. If it doesn’t work, Harris will definitely kill him. Both of them look like people who know how to handle guns. He curses himself for not arranging back-up. He curses Judy even more.
    They cross the yard, silent except for the sound of the wind. Judy thinks about shouting for help but who would hear her? The horses? The cat? The donkey? She wonders where Randolph and Romilly are, not that they’d be much help. Their feet squelch in the mud as they approach the horse walker. What is Harris planning to do to them? Surely if he wanted to kill them he’d have done it by now. Or does he have something more exciting in mind?
    Harris kicks open the door of the horse walker and Judy and Clough are pushed into one of the compartments. They hear the door being locked and footsteps going away. They look at each other. They are shut in a triangular wooden box, just wide enough, at its widest, for two people standing abreast. Clough hurls himself against the door. The wood creaks but holds.
    ‘Have you still got your phone?’ asks Judy.
    ‘No. That bastard took it.’
    ‘What are they going to do to us?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ says Clough grimly.
    ‘I can’t believe Caroline’s in it too.’
    ‘Nor can I. Trace told me that she was a real airy-fairy type, loved all the birds and the little animals, that sort of thing. Wait till I tell her.’
    They are both silent, both thinking the same thing. Will Clough ever have the chance to tell his girlfriend about Caroline’s perfidy? Funnily enough, Judy finds it harder to imagine Clough being killed than it is to imagine her own death. Is this because she feels so guilty that, in some way, she thinks she deserves to die?
    The sound of hoof-beats recalls Judy to life. She looksat Clough, who tightens his lips and clenches his fists. He looks quite formidable. All these years Judy has deplored her colleague’s Neanderthal tendencies; now she’s glad of