Ruth Galloway by Elly Griffiths Read Free Book Online Page A

One is a wrong number, one is Phil reminding her about the party, one is her mother asking if she’s home yet and one … one is distinctly surprising.
    â€˜Hello … er … Ruth. This is Harry Nelson speaking, from the Norfolk Police. Can you ring me? Thank you.’
    Harry Nelson. She hasn’t spoken to him since the day they found the Iron Age bones. She sent him the results of the carbon 14 dating, confirming that the body was probably female, pre-pubescent, dating from about 650 BC . She heard nothing back and didn’t expect to. Once, before Christmas, when she was shopping dispiritedly in Norwich, she saw him striding along, looking discontented and weighed down with carrier bags. With him was a blonde woman, slim in a designer tracksuit, and two sulky-looking teenage daughters. Lurking in Borders, Ruth hid behind a display of novelty calendars and watched them. In this female environment of shopping bags and fairy lights, Nelson looked more inconveniently macho than ever. The woman (his wife surely?) turned to him with a flick of hair and a smile of practised persuasiveness. Nelson said something, looking grumpy, and both girls laughed. They must gang up on him at home, Ruth decided, excluding him from their all-girl chats about boyfriends and mascara. But then Nelson caught up with his wife, whispered something that brought forth a genuine laugh, ruffled his daughter’s careful hairstyle and sidestepped neatly away, grinning at her cry of rage. For a moment they looked united; a happy, teasing, slightly stressed family in the middle of their Christmas shopping. Ruth turned back to the calendars. The Simpsons’ grinning yellow faces smirked back at her. She hated Christmas anyway.
    Why was Harry Nelson ringing her now, at home? What was so important that he had to speak to her this minute?And why is he so arrogant that he can’t even leave a phone number? Irritated but intensely curious, Ruth rifles through the phone book to find a number for the Norfolk police. Of course it is the wrong one. ‘You want CID,’ says the voice at the end of the phone, sounding slightly impressed. Eventually she gets through to a flunky who connects her, somewhat reluctantly, to DCI Nelson.
    â€˜Nelson,’ barks an impatient voice, sounding more Northern and even less friendly than she remembers.
    â€˜It’s Ruth Galloway from the university. You rang me.’
    â€˜Oh yes. I rang you some days ago.’
    â€˜I’ve been away,’ says Ruth. She’s damned if she’s going to apologise.
    â€˜Something’s come up. Can you come into the station?’
    Ruth is nonplussed. Of course, she wants to know what has come up but Nelson’s request sounds more like an order. Also there is something a bit frightening about coming ‘into the station’. It sounds uncomfortably like ‘helping the police with their enquiries’.
    â€˜I’m very busy—’ she begins.
    â€˜I’ll send a car,’ says Nelson. ‘Tomorrow morning alright?’
    It is on the tip of Ruth’s tongue to say no, tomorrow is not alright. I’m off to a very important jet-set conference in Hawaii so I’m far too busy to drop everything just because you order me to. Instead she says, ‘I suppose I could spare you an hour or two.’
    â€˜Right,’ says Nelson. Then he adds, ‘Thank you.’ It sounds as if he hasn’t had much practice in saying it.

CHAPTER 5
    The police car arrives at Ruth’s door promptly at nine. Expecting this (Nelson seems like an early riser to her) she is dressed and ready. As she walks to the car, she sees one of the weekenders (Sara? Sylvie? Susanna?) looking furtively out of the window, so she waves and smiles cheerfully. They probably think she is being arrested. Guilty of living alone and weighing over ten stone.
    She is driven into the centre of King’s Lynn. The police station is in a detached