Clayton Henry turns out to live in a converted windmill just outside Kirkham, another picturesque town on the Roman road to Ribchester. Ruth, expecting a few charred sausages washed down with warm wine, is amazed to see a marquee, a bouncy castle and what looks like liveried staff carrying trays of champagne glasses.
‘Bloody hell,’ says Cathbad, as they park behind two Porsches and an Alfa Romeo. ‘Is it a wedding?’
‘He said barbeque,’ says Ruth, getting Kate out of her car seat. Kate looks up at the pink castle swelling out of the side of the windmill.
‘Balloon,’ she says, in wonder.
Ruth feels rather embarrassed, turning up with Kate and Cathbad in tow. She doesn’t know quite why she accepted Clayton’s invitation in the first place. For years, her instinct has been to start inventing excuses at the first mention of the word ‘party’. What on earth has made her become sociable in her old age? Partly it’s curiosity. She wants to meet Dan’s colleagues. Up until now she has been unable to imagine her glamorous friend in the grim surroundings of the cigarette factory or even digging outside the city walls in Ribchester. Maybe the party will shed some light on Dan’s decision to abandon the dreaming spires for a shabby ex-polytechnic. And Cathbad had been keen to come. Unlike Ruth, he enjoys a party and she feels that he deserves some fun. He has been sweet to her over the last few days, looking after Kate, cooking for them all, asking interested questions about the finds at Ribchester. But it makes her sad to see him so muted and domesticated. He has even stopped wearing his cloak. Maybe a party will awaken the old, eccentric, libation-loving Cathbad.
All the same, as they walk towards the windmill, she wishes they didn’t look so much like a couple. But Kate insists on holding one of Ruth’s hands and one of Cathbad’s so that they approach the house as a unit—man, woman and child. It’s like an advertisement for a company strong on family values but weak on style. And that’s another thing; she’s wearing the wrong clothes. Cotton trousers and loose top are OK for a family get-together but all wrong for a party with waiters. As they walk through a rose-strewn archway into the garden all Ruth can see are women in flowery dresses. Although it’s a cool summer’s day, there seems to be an abundance of flesh on show—spaghetti straps, Lycra minis, strapless midi dresses. She sees men in striped blazers, women in hats. No one else is wearing beige cotton trousers.
‘Ruth!’ Clayton Henry comes towards them, resplendent in a Hawaiian shirt and white trousers.
‘Hi.’ Ruth has brought a bottle, which seems wrong now. She pushes it into Henry’s hands nonetheless.
‘How kind.’ He looks around for somewhere to put it.
‘This is Cathbad,’ says Ruth, ‘my friend. And Kate, my daughter.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’ Cathbad and Henry exchange a hearty handshake though Ruth thinks there is something watchful about both men, as if they’re summing each other up.
‘Cathbad, did you say?’
‘Yes,’ says Cathbad modestly. ‘It’s a druidical name.’
‘How fascinating,’ says Henry and looks as if he’s going to say more, but at that moment a glamorous woman with long blonde hair floats out of the house.
‘Darling, have you seen the . . .’ She stops.
‘Pippa,’ says Henry, with apparent delight. ‘Do come and meet Ruth and Cathbad and their little girl. This is Pippa, my wife.’
If Clayton Henry is making assumptions about Ruth, Ruth realises that she has been guilty of the same crime. Without thinking much about it she had assumed that Henry, with his soft voice and pointed shoes, must be gay. She could just about imagine him married to some plump Bohemian type but not this willowy beauty with model-girl hair and the kind of shoes that make Ruth nervous. Apart from anything else, Pippa Henry is at least four inches taller than her husband.
She seems very friendly though, kissing Ruth on the cheek and bending down to talk to Kate.
‘Would you like to go on the bouncy castle, sweetheart?’
Kate, perhaps, like her mother, intimidated by glamour, hides behind Ruth. A white fluffy dog appears from nowhere and starts barking furiously. Pippa Henry scoops it into her arms.
‘What a lovely poodle,’ says Ruth, drawing Kate away.
‘Actually it’s a bichon frise.’
Of course it is.
In the end Ruth takes Kate onto the bouncy castle. This is the great thing about having a child, she thinks, grabbing a glass en route. You can escape to play with them and no one thinks you’re unsociable, they just think you’re a great mother. Ruth watches Kate bouncing on the Barbie castle, sips champagne and thinks that she wouldn’t mind if she spent the entire afternoon like this. Across the lawn, she can see Cathbad chatting animatedly with Pippa. He has always been susceptible to pretty women. She hopes Pippa will take his mind off Judy for a bit. Still, she’d better corner him before long and establish who’s driving home. God, they really are getting like a married couple.
‘Ruth?’ says a voice in her ear.
She swings round to see a pleasant-faced man of about her own age, with thinning sandy hair and a hesitant smile.
‘I hope you don’t mind me introducing myself but Professor Henry said that you were a friend of Dan’s.’
‘Yes, I was,’ says Ruth, thinking that the past tense is both sad and appropriate. She was a friend of Dan’s in the past, when they were both young.
‘I’m Sam,’ says the man, extending a hand. ‘Sam Elliot. I was a friend of his too. I just can’t believe that he’s gone.’
‘Nor can I,’ says Ruth. ‘I hadn’t seen him for ages but even so . . .’ Her voice dies away. Suddenly, surprisingly, she feels close to tears and has to cover up by checking on Kate, who is sitting on the very edge of the pink castle, rocking to and fro while the other children caper around her.
When she turns back, Sam Elliot is also looking sombre but he smiles when he sees her looking at him. His face isn’t made for sadness, all the lines go upwards. Ruth can easily imagine him being friends with Dan.
‘This is quite a party,’ she says.
‘Yes,’ says Sam. ‘It’s a yearly event, Clayton’s barbeque. He always has a big do at Christmas as well.’
Ruth tries to imagine Dan at one of Clayton Henry’s parties, playing the piano, drinking champagne, flirting with the prettiest women. She remembers him as something of a party animal and says as much to Sam.
‘Funny,’ he says. ‘I think of Dan as rather quiet. Always friendly but a bit aloof until you got to know him. Were you at university with him?’
‘Yes, at UCL.’
‘I was at Leeds,’ says Sam. ‘It seems a hundred years ago now. Mind you, a hundred years is nothing to an archaeologist, is it?’
Sam shakes his head. ‘I teach modern history. I was one of Dan’s colleagues. As Clayton may have told you, we cover everything from Boadicea to Adolf Hitler.’
‘I’m a teacher too,’ says Ruth. ‘I teach forensic archaeology at North Norfolk.’
‘I know,’ says Sam. ‘Clayton said you’d come to look at Dan’s discovery.’
‘Oh, do you know about that?’ asks Ruth, surprised. From Clayton’s manner, she had assumed that the whole thing was a deadly secret although, come to think of it, Dan could never have managed an excavation that size without some help.
Sam’s reply confirms this. ‘I was on the first dig with Dan,’ he says. ‘We were all volunteers then. Later he got a grant and was able to get the professionals in. It was really exciting though, when we first realised that there was something important buried there.’
Ruth knows this excitement well. She remembers when they had first discovered the wooden henge on the beach in Norfolk. The incredible feeling of something rising from the ground, something that had been hidden from sight for thousands of years, the sense of looking at the world through ancient eyes. All the same, she wonders exactly how much Sam knows.
‘Did he tell you about the bones?’ she asks.
‘Bones?’ says Sam. ‘Oh, they found a tomb, didn’t they? That was later. When I was digging Dan was just happy to have found the temple. The Temple of the Raven God. He was going to write a book about it.’
So Sam didn’t know about King Arthur. For reasons of his own, Dan had kept that quiet. But he had still been excited enough to think about writing a book. Did he start the book and, if so, where is it now? On the missing laptop, she supposes.
‘The Temple of the Raven God?’ says a mocking voice. ‘What nonsense are you talking now, Sammy?’
A man and a woman are walking towards them. They look like something out of Brideshead Revisited, the man in white trousers and shirt, the woman in a short, rose-patterned dress that makes Ruth feel about a hundred stone.
‘Hi, Elaine,’ says Sam without enthusiasm. ‘Hello, Guy.’
‘Aren’t you going to introduce us?’ says Elaine. Close up, she isn’t so gorgeous. Her hair is dyed blonde and her eyes are too close together.
‘This is Ruth Galloway from the University of North Norfolk.’
‘Oh,’ says Elaine, eyes widening. ‘The famous archaeology expert.’
Ruth registers the mockery but elects to take this at face value.
‘That’s right,’ she says.
‘You’ve come to look at the bones,’ says Guy. His voice is an elaborate upper-class drawl, with traces of Lancashire still clinging to the vowels. Ruth wonders if he was really christened Guy.
‘I didn’t know there were any bones,’ says Sam.
‘Sammy doesn’t know anything about real history,’ says Elaine to Ruth, ‘he only knows about the Second World War and the rise of communism in China. Stuff like that.’
Sam laughs but Ruth thinks he looks rather hurt.
‘It’s a really important discovery,’ says Guy. Something in his tone makes Clayton Henry, who is a few feet away, look over towards them. Ruth thinks that he is going to intervene, but at that moment Kate causes a distraction by falling off the bouncy castle and bursting into noisy tears.
Elaine and Guy are post-graduate students. Clayton explains this as they eat lunch in the marquee. There are tables inside too but Ruth elected for the outdoors in case Kate starts one of her food-throwing fits. At the moment, though, she is being angelic, eating potato salad and actually using her spoon. She looks like Little Miss Muffet.
‘We don’t get many graduate students these days, I’m afraid,’ says Clayton, throwing a piece of chicken skin to the drooling bichon frisé. ‘Young people just aren’t interested in history because there’s no money in it. But Guy is very able. He’s ex-Oxbridge actually. Could have had his pick of post-grad places but he chose us. Never really knew why.’ He laughs heartily.
‘What about Elaine?’
Clayton must have detected something in her tone because he looks up, the shrewdness of his expression not completely undermined by the blob of coronation chicken on his chin.
‘You mustn’t take Elaine the wrong way. She’s got an odd manner but she’s a dear girl underneath, a real sweetie.’
Ruth thinks she will reserve judgement on this but nothing in the prancing figure she can see laughing uproariously in the garden, surrounded by admiring men, makes her think ‘sweetie’ exactly.
‘They were talking about Dan’s dig,’ she says. ‘The Temple of the Raven God.’
‘Guy was very involved with the investigations. They both were.’
‘What about Sam?’
‘Sam Elliot? No, he’s a modern history man. He was great friends with Dan though. Devastated at his death. Well, we all were.’
Anything less devastated than the laughing, champagneswilling crowd in the marquee would be hard to imagine. Still, Ruth supposes that they were upset at the time.
She takes another mouthful of salmon. The food is really delicious, though this hasn’t stopped Kate picking all the spring onions out of the salad and putting them on Ruth’s plate. Now Kate is feeding cocktail sausages to the dog.
‘Don’t,’ says Ruth. ‘It might make him sick.’
‘It won’t,’ says Clayton. ‘He eats what he likes. Spoilt little beggar.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Willoughby. Don’t blame me. It was Pippa’s idea.’
‘It’s a great name,’ says Ruth. ‘We met a dog called Thing the other day.’
‘Thing,’ repeats Kate, patting Willoughby on his curly top-knot.
‘How old is she?’ asks Clayton.
‘Nearly two,’ says Ruth. ‘Do you have children?’
‘Sadly not,’ says Clayton, looking anything but sad. ‘I’ve got a stepdaughter, though, Chloe. She’s away at uni at the moment but I’m a doting dad, I promise you.’
So Pippa was married before. Ruth tries, and fails, to imagine the path that led her to Clayton Henry. She also wonders what happened to Chloe’s father if Clayton can refer to himself as ‘Dad’. Maybe he died and Clayton provided a shoulder to cry on. It’s hard to imagine any other circumstances in which the affable, but distinctly rotund, Clayton would end up with the beautiful Pippa. Still, there’s no doubt that they look happy together and the house is fantastic (she’s had the tour). Cathbad had been delighted to discover that it was built on the site of an old plague pit. He’s probably off somewhere now, communing with the unquiet spirits. She hasn’t seen him for ages.
‘Must be hard,’ says Clayton. ‘Combining motherhood with work. How do you and Cathbad manage?’
She really must get this straight. ‘We’re not together,’ she says. ‘We’re just friends. Cathbad isn’t Kate’s father.’
‘Oh . . .’ Clayton looks intrigued, his eyes bright, but Ruth has no intention of saying any more.
‘I’m looking forward to seeing the bones on Monday,’ she says.
Clayton shudders. ‘You forensics girls are always so bloodthirsty.’
Ruth is annoyed at being called a girl. ‘I hardly think there’ll be any blood,’ she says coldly.
‘No. Just a pile of dry bones,’ says Clayton. ‘But you can tell everything from bones these days, can’t you?’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ says Ruth cautiously. ‘Accuracy of tests vary. Carbon 14 tests can be out by as much as hundreds of years. They can be affected by sun spots, solar flares, nuclear testing—things like that. Isotopic analysis should be able to tell us where the individual was born, judging by the chemicals present in the bones.’
‘And how accurate is that?’
‘Usually pretty accurate. Analysis of calcified tissue gives a good indication of the palaeodiet.’
‘Paleo what?’
‘What the individual ate,’ explains Ruth, adding a cheese roulade to her palaeodiet. ‘By using oxygen isotope analysis we can get information on diet which can then point to the region where this man or woman originated and perhaps where they spent their last years.’
‘Why do you say “or woman”? Dan was pretty sure it was a man.’
‘I’m sure he was,’ says Ruth. ‘It’s just . . . I was caught out that way myself once.’
Clayton laughs. ‘Be a great thing if King Arthur turned out to be a woman. It’d make the papers all over the world. The feminists would love us. I’d be rich.’ He corrects himself. ‘The university would be rich.’
Ruth thinks that he sounds rather bitter. She remembers what he said about the department being unpopular, about not being able to attract students. She says, rather diffidently, ‘You said the department wasn’t very profitable.’
‘My dear girl,’ says Clayton. ‘We’re in desperate straits. Absolutely stony broke. But a big find could change everything. The publicity would mean everything to us. And I’m not going to keep this quiet, whatever anyone says.’ He looks quite steely as he says this and, for the first time, Ruth sees the head of department as someone to be reckoned with.
‘Who wants it kept quiet?’ she asks.
‘Oh, no one important.’ The breezy host is back. Clayton leans back in his chair and gestures to a waiter, who immediately fills his glass before turning to Ruth. ‘No thanks,’ she says hastily. As Cathbad has disappeared, she assumes that she’s doing the driving. Clayton raises his brimming glass to her.
‘We’re counting on you, Ruth,’ he says, jovially. ‘If you confirm that the bones are . . . who we hope they are . . . then I’m saved. We’re all saved. You really do hold the future of the department in your hands.’
After lunch, Clayton makes a little speech, full of in-jokes and many references to the Dean (Gail Shires) who isn’t present. Ruth gathers that Ms Shires is not a fan of the history department, also that the feeling is reciprocated. She is starting to feel tired and wishes they could go home. She has switched to orange juice as the last time she saw Cathbad he was in the conservatory with Pippa and several other gilt-edged women, holding forth on exorcism, glass brimming. Despite herself, she feels rather resentful. She wanted Cathbad to enjoy himself but not to become a fully fledged member of Clayton’s beautiful people. He might really be her husband, the way he’s taking her for granted.
Grumpily she takes Kate back to the bouncy castle and watches her falling about. The motion of the giant pink mushroom is starting to make Ruth feel slightly sick.
‘Look, Mum!’
‘I am looking.’
‘Hello. Ruth, isn’t it?’
Ruth swings round and finds herself facing the Brideshead man, Guy Whatsit. Like Elaine, he isn’t as glamorous close up. Although the day isn’t exactly torrid, he is sweating heavily and his white shirt is sticking to his back.
‘We didn’t get a chance to chat earlier,’ he says, smiling charmingly. Only because your girlfriend seemed hellbent on insulting me, thinks Ruth. She doesn’t smile back.
‘I was a great friend of Dan’s,’ says Guy, wiping his brow with one of Clayton’s linen napkins.
Another one, thinks Ruth. She must remember to ask Caz if any of these so-called friends were at his funeral.
‘I worked very closely with Dan on the Ribchester dig,’ says Guy. ‘It was really a joint project.’
The hell it was, thinks Ruth. She remembers Dan’s words in his letter. I’ve made a discovery. No mention of anyone else. Ruth is as sure as if she had been present at the excavation that this find was Dan’s alone, his personal discovery.
‘So,’ Guy is saying, ‘if you find anything, anything interesting, and want to discuss it with someone . . .’
I’ll ring Max, Ruth vows silently. Aloud, she says, ‘Clayton tells me you’re a graduate student.’
‘Yes,’ Guy stiffens slightly, recognising the challenge in her words. ‘But Dan treated me as an equal, we were always bouncing ideas off each other.’
Before Ruth can answer, Kate does her own bouncing, falling heavily on her face. She bursts into tears. Ruth gathers her up. ‘She’s tired,’ she says, over Kate’s head. ‘I’d better take her home. Have you seen Cathbad anywhere? My . . . er . . . friend?’
‘He must be inside,’ says Guy. ‘I’ll come with you.’ This is the last thing Ruth wants but she can hardly protest. Carrying a still sobbing Kate, she allows Guy to shepherd her through the French windows.
In the conservatory, she finds Cathbad attempting to find ley lines using a barbeque fork as a dowsing stick and Elaine in floods of tears, weeping on the shoulder of a very embarrassed Sam Elliot.
Cathbad and Kate sleep all the way home. Ruth winds her way through the unfamiliar roads accompanied only by gentle snoring. That’s the last time she’s going to a party with Cathbad.
The barbeque had not been without its compensations though. She has, at least, met some friends of Dan’s. But were they really his friends? She can imagine Dan getting on with Sam but is not so sure about Guy, with his cricket flannels and claims of joint projects. But then again, how well did she really know Dan? She hadn’t seen him for twenty years. People can change a lot in that time; she knows she has. Maybe Dan was best friends with Guy and spent many a happy evening bouncing ideas around with him. She just knows that if the bones yield any great surprises Guy won’t be the first person she rings. And what about Elaine (such a sweetie), where does she fit in? And why was she crying at the end of the party? Is she Guy’s girlfriend or Sam’s? Oh well, the tangled love lives in the history department are nothing to do with her, thank God.
And why are the bones being held at a private forensics laboratory? Clayton gave her the address as she left. Why weren’t the bones kept at Pendle? Clayton mentioned a strong-room, and surely with all those science departments there must be a few laboratories going spare? She knows that the police are using private forensics firms more and more but surely this isn’t a police case? These bones are hundreds of years old, there’s no need for an inquest. She wonders again who it was that wanted the investigation kept quiet.
Back at Lytham, Cathbad goes straight to bed. Kate, though, is awake and inclined to be grouchy. Ruth decides to take her for a walk to the windmill. It’s seven o’clock but a mild evening and at this rate Kate won’t be asleep for hours.
Their progress, without the pushchair, is painfully slow, but when they reach the promenade, Kate cheers up and runs towards the windmill. It looks very different from Clayton Henry’s carefully restored home, thinks Ruth, following more slowly. This windmill, although obviously scenic, is still workmanlike, standing sturdily on its patch of grass, looking out to sea, its black sails intact. Clayton’s home had been a wonder of glass and exposed wood, old and new artfully combined, with a minstrel’s gallery and an observatory at the top, where the sails had been. How could a professor in a failing department afford a home like that? Ruth wishes there was someone she could ask. Not for the first time, she imagines chatting to Dan about his colleagues, forgetting that if Dan were here she wouldn’t be.
Her phone bleeps. Probably Cathbad, wondering where they are. Kate runs up to her and Ruth hoists her onto her hip, clicking on Messages with her free hand.
But it’s not Cathbad. It’s her mystery friend again.
‘If u know what’s good for you,’ runs the text, ‘stay away from the bones.’
Ruth stands still for so long that Kate becomes bored and scrambles down. Is this message from someone who was at the party? Someone who, only a few hours ago, she was chatting to by the bouncy castle? How many people know that she’s going to see the bones on Monday? What is the mystery about Dan’s discovery? Something or someone is responsible for Dan’s fears, Clayton’s bluster, maybe even Elaine’s tears. But what or who? She knows she should ring Nelson. Someone is threatening her and, by implication, Kate. But she shrinks from Nelson knowing that she has followed him to Lancashire. The texter is probably just a nutcase. None of the preening figures at the barbeque struck her as dangerous exactly. Nevertheless, she shivers in the mild evening air and, gathering up her daughter, walks home without looking back.