The Crossing Places - Elly Griffiths by Elly Griffiths Read Free Book Online Page A

substitutes’. ‘No,’
    Ruth had answered, straight-faced. ‘They’re kittens. If I had a baby it would be a cat substitute.’
    She reaches the Saltmarsh by mid-afternoon and the winter sun is low over the reed beds. The tide is coming in and the seagulls are calling, high and excited. When Ruth gets out of her car she breathes in the wonderful sea smell, potent and mysterious, and feels glad that she is home.
    Then she sees the weekenders’ monster car parked outside their cottage and feels a stab of irritation. Don’t say they have come here for New Year. Why can’t they stay in London like everyone else, flocking to Trafalgar Square or having bijou little parties at home? Why do they have to come here to ‘get away from it all’? They’ll probably let off fireworks and scare every bird for miles around. Imagining David’s reaction, she smiles grimly.
    Inside her cottage, Flint leaps on her, mewing furiously.
    Sparky, sitting on the sofa, steadfastly ignores her. Ruth’s friend Shona has been coming in to feed the cats and Ruth finds welcome home flowers on the table as well as milk and white wine in the fridge. God bless Shona, thinks Ruth, putting on the kettle.
    Shona, who teaches English at the university, is Ruth’s best friend in Norfolk. Like Peter, she had been a volunteer on the henge dig ten years ago. Fey and Irish, with wild Pre-Raphaelite hair, Shona declared herself in sympathy with the druids and even joined them for an all-night vigil, sitting on the sand chanting until the tide forced them inland and Shona was lured away by the promise of a Guinness in the pub. That was the thing about Shona, she may have her New Age principles but you could nearly always overcome them with the promise of a drink. Shona is in a relationship with a married lecturer and sometimes she comes over to Ruth’s cottage, weeping and flailing her hair around, declaring that she hates men and wants to become a nun or a lesbian or both. Then she will have a glass of wine and brighten up completely, singing along to Bruce Springsteen and telling Ruth that she is a ‘dote’.
    Shona is one of the best things about the university.
    Her answer phone shows four messages. 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.
    ‘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’ grinumg yellow faces smirked back at her. She hated
    Christmas anyway.
    Why was Harry Nelson ringing her now, at home? What was so