‘. . . and making sure to wash your hands thoroughly whenever you come in. Experts suggest singing “Happy Birthday” twice over while you do it.’
Jo beams around the room. Nelson groans inwardly. Is this what his life has become? Listening to a woman in jogging clothes (‘athleisure-wear’ according to his woman officers) telling him to wash his hands? Jo asks if there are any questions and Judy would like to know if there are contingency plans in the event of the virus taking hold in the UK. Nelson shoots Judy a reproachful look. Don’t encourage her. Jo says importantly that she is on a coronavirus working party. Then, thank goodness, she leaves the room and Nelson can get on with his briefing.
‘There are a couple of things that bother me about the Gaywood suicide,’ he says. ‘I’d like you, Judy, to speak to the adult children. See if you can get a sense of the mother’s mood in recent months.’
‘Do you really think it could be foul play?’ asks Tony Zhang. He’s the newest member of the team and manages to get an unseemly relish into the words ‘foul play’.
‘There’s no sign of it,’ says Nelson, repressively. ‘There’ll be a post-mortem. That’s routine in cases like this. But, like I say, there are a couple of things. A ready meal in the microwave, for one thing.’
‘People don’t always act logically before taking their own lives,’ says Judy. ‘There are plenty of cases of people buying return tickets, that sort of thing.’
‘I know,’ says Nelson. ‘But it can’t hurt to check up.’ He stops himself from adding ‘there’s a good girl’. He has three daughters, two of them adult professionals, and knows where the line is. Judy is a detective inspector. She should really be leading her own team but, to do that, she would probably need to move from Norfolk. Nelson dreads that day although he knows he should be encouraging Judy to look for jobs elsewhere. Or retire himself.
When the briefing is over, Nelson goes to his office to prepare for a tedious meeting on regional crime targets. His secretary, Leah, brings him coffee and then, unusually, seems disposed to chat.
‘I heard you talking about the Gaywood case,’ she says. ‘That’s quite near me.’
‘Is it?’ Leah must live somewhere, Nelson supposes, but he’s never really thought about where.
‘I think my mum knew her. The woman who committed suicide.’
‘Samantha Wilson?’
‘Yes. Mum was very shocked when she heard.’
‘Was she?’ Nelson is listening now.
‘Yes,’ says Leah, heading towards the door. ‘But you never know when people are desperate, do you?’
And she is gone, leaving the door swinging gently behind her.
Ruth is looking into a grave. Council workers digging up a street in the centre of Norwich have found what looks to be a human skull. Ruth is not too surprised by this. The road is in Tombland, the ancient area around the cathedral, and human skeletons have been found here before. She has decided to bring some of her students so that they can watch the excavation at first hand. They stand in a nervous and expectant group by the ‘Road Closed’ sign while Ruth and Ted Cross from the field archaeology team consult the foreman.
‘I knew it was human at once,’ he says, ‘so we stopped work immediately.’
‘Thank you,’ says Ruth. ‘We’ll excavate as quickly as we can.’ She knows that the delay will be costly and inconvenient for the council.
‘Do you think it’s been here a long time?’ asks the foreman, whose name is Cezary. The yellowing skull is clearly visible in the earth, lying beside a broken pipe. The skull itself looks undamaged and Ruth feels an excavator’s thrill.
‘Probably,’ said Ruth. ‘There was a medieval cemetery nearby.’
‘Is that why it’s called Tombland?’ asks Cezary.
‘Tombland comes from a Danish word meaning empty space,’ says Ruth. ‘I know that’s disappointing.’
‘Plenty of tombs here though,’ says Ted. ‘We’ve found skeletons before, haven’t we, Ruth?’
‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘The graveyard of St George’s once covered this whole area. There are rumours that there’s a plague pit here too, although nothing has ever been discovered.’
‘Plague?’ says Cezary, rather nervously.
‘There were several outbreaks of the plague in Norwich in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. So many people died that there wasn’t room in the graveyards,’ says Ruth. ‘It’s thought that the bodies were probably thrown into pits. Mass graves.’
‘The outcast dead,’ says Ted. There’s a service of this name every year, to remember the bodies buried in unmarked graves. Ruth always tries to attend, despite not believing in an afterlife.
Ted climbs into the trench and Ruth beckons her students nearer.
‘Human bones must always be treated with great care and respect,’ she says, as Ted brushes away the soil from the skull. ‘Every bone and fragment must be preserved. When I was excavating war graves in Bosnia, my mentor used to say that if you leave a bone uncharted, then you are an accessory to the crime.’
The students, who are only in their second term, look at each other nervously.
Ted only needs to work for a few more minutes before it becomes clear that an entire skeleton is present. Cezary goes to tell his workforce to go home for the day.
‘See the way the body is laid out,’ Ruth tells her students. ‘This suggests a formal burial. The corpse may have been shrouded. There may even have been a coffin.’
‘What’s happened to the coffin?’ says someone. It’s an obvious question but Ruth is glad it’s been asked.
‘It would have rotted away,’ she says.
Erik, Ruth’s mentor at university, used to say, ‘Wood returns to earth, only bones and stone remain.’
Ruth takes a measuring rod and lays it next to the emerging bones.
‘It’s important to photograph the bones in situ next to a suitable scale,’ she says, in lecture mode. ‘We need to take samples from the context – the surrounding soil – too. That will help with dating.’
‘How do you know it isn’t recent?’ says someone, a man with a full-face beard. Ruth doesn’t do much teaching now that she’s head of department, and the students are starting to look very much alike.
‘Very recent burials are comparatively easy to spot,’ says Ruth. ‘You can tell by the grave cut, for one thing. But it can be hard to differentiate between bones that are fifty years old and those that are a thousand years old. That’s why we need carbon-14 testing. But, in this case, it’s an established medieval site so I think we’re looking at skeletal matter from that era. I could be wrong, of course.’
No one thinks this is likely.
By three o’clock, the skeleton has been excavated. It’s not very tall and, from the pelvic bones, Ruth thinks that it is female. She allowed the students to help with the final stages and they are in a state of high excitement as they load the numbered paper bags into a box marked ‘Archaeology Lab’. Ruth is in a more sombre mood. She always feels that she should handle the bones as if the dead person’s relatives are watching her and that’s no different if they died ten years ago or in the fourteenth century. Besides, her back is aching.
Ruth walks back to the car park with Ted. It’s been a grey day and is already getting dark. Lights shine in the cathedral close and the church itself looms above them, birds circling the tower and steeple. An omen of something, Cathbad would say.
‘Are you OK to take the bones back to UNN?’ asks Ruth. ‘I’ve got to pick up Kate. Her childminder can’t make it today.’
‘No problem,’ says Ted. He’s carrying the box under his arm. A human being weighs very little in the end.
‘Ruth!’ A figure appears from one of the many secret archways that surround the cloisters. A woman, wearing a grey cloak that flutters dramatically in the uncertain light.
‘Blimey,’ says Ted. ‘It’s the Grey Lady.’
The Grey Lady of Tombland is a famous Norfolk ghost but Ruth has recognised the apparition. It’s Janet Meadows, a local historian who also works as a cathedral guide.
‘Hi, Janet.’
‘Hallo, Ruth. Have you been involved in the excavation?’
Ruth nods towards the box in Ted’s arms. ‘Just finished.’
‘Do you think it’s a plague victim?’ says Janet.
‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ says Ruth, ‘but I think we might just have come across a cemetery that used to belong to one of the churches.’
‘Can I talk to you?’ says Janet. ‘Have you got a minute?’
‘I’ve got to collect Kate from school. Could we get together another day? Have coffee or something?’
‘Of course,’ says Janet. Ted loads the bones into his van and drives off with a cheery toot of the horn. The birds fly squawking into the air and the two women watch him go.
‘What did you want to talk about?’ says Ruth.
‘The plague,’ says Janet.