The Ghost Fields (Ruth Galloway) (27 page)

‘I suddenly thought that you might be in the middle of bedtime. I’m a bit out of touch with the schedule.’

‘It’s OK. I was just trying to persuade Kate to have a bath.’

‘I remember when Jane hated having her hair washed. Used to scream the place down. Now she seems to spend half her life having her hair done.’

Ruth stores away this titbit about Frank’s only daughter.

‘It was great to see you on Thursday,’ Frank is saying.

‘Great to see you too,’ says Ruth. She knows that, even at this distance, she is going red.

‘I was wondering if you were coming to the shoot on Monday. At Blackstock Hall.’

No, Ruth wasn’t planning to go to the shoot. As far as she knows, she isn’t needed and she has plenty of work to do at the university. Besides, she feels as if she has had enough of the Blackstocks for a while, especially after Nelson’s comments yesterday. She realises that Frank doesn’t know about Clough but feels curiously reluctant to tell him.

‘It would be lovely to see you,’ says Frank. ‘Maybe we could even get away for lunch.’

‘I don’t know,’ says Ruth. ‘I’m pretty busy at work. I’ll see what I can do.’

Nelson is back at the hospital. Lindsay Clough is still there in the waiting room as if she hasn’t moved in the last twenty-four hours. The only difference is that Mark isn’t there. ‘He works on Saturdays,’ says Lindsay. ‘If you can call it work.’ Nelson decides not to enquire further.

Clough has been taken back into the theatre. The consultant thinks that there may be further damage to the pulmonary artery. ‘That’s lungs, isn’t it?’ says Lindsay. ‘I didn’t like to ask too many questions.’ ‘I think so,’ says Nelson, wishing he’d paid more attention in biology lessons at school. He’d only really been interested in sexual reproduction, but that’s a Catholic boys’ grammar school for you.

Nelson tries to find a doctor to give Lindsay more information but it’s Saturday evening and the place feels like a ghost ship. There’s one harassed nurse on duty on the ward and she just says brusquely that she’ll let them know when she has any news. The only comfort he gets is from a cleaner slowly pushing a mop up and down the corridor. ‘He’ll be fine,’ she says. ‘I’m praying for him.’ Nelson thanks her and resolves again to ring his mother. He buys Lindsay a cup of tea and a KitKat from the vending machine and goes back to the waiting room.

At seven o’clock, the surgeon himself makes an appearance, still wearing his surgical scrubs. ‘Good thing we operated because there was a bleeding wound on the anterior wall of the left pulmonary artery.’

Lindsay doesn’t seem to take this in and Nelson can’t say he blames her. ‘Will he be OK now?’ she says.

‘The operation was a success,’ says the doctor, ‘but we’re not out of the woods yet.’

What the bloody hell does that mean? thinks Nelson. He’d be crucified if he said something like that in a press conference.

‘Can we see him?’ asks Lindsay.

‘When he comes round,’ says the doctor, backing towards the door. ‘I can’t see why not.’ Meanwhile Nelson is thinking:
we?

There are so many tubes sticking out of him that Clough is almost unrecognisable. His eyes are closed and he looks pale and unshaven.

Lindsay takes his hand. ‘Oh Davey,’ she says.

‘He might not be able to hear you,’ says the nurse. But Clough opens one eye.

‘Hallo, Mum.’

Lindsay Clough starts to cry. Nelson pats her awkwardly on the shoulder.

‘Hallo, boss,’ says Clough.

‘Evening, Cloughie. Have you been getting into trouble again?’

Clough smiles faintly. His lips move and Nelson just catches the words ‘red devil’.

CHAPTER 25

‘Red devil,’ says Tim. ‘That’s Man U. isn’t it?’

‘Cloughie doesn’t support Man U,’ says Nelson. ‘He’s a Chelsea man through and through.’

‘At least it’s a proper team,’ says Judy. ‘Not like Blackpool.’

‘Watch it, Judy,’ says Tim. ‘Blackpool were in the Premiership for ten minutes back in 2010.’

‘And we’ll be there again,’ says Nelson. He doesn’t mind the teasing. It’s part of the general relief that Clough seems to be out of danger. Football chat is the team’s preferred way of letting off steam. With Nelson, Tim, Clough and Judy all supporting different clubs, there’s plenty of scope for discussion. Judy, loyal to her local roots, supports Norwich City and Tim is an Arsenal fan. That figures, thought Nelson, as soon as he discovered this fact. There is something smooth and metrosexual about Tim that Nelson equates with the North London club.

‘Red devil,’ he says. ‘That must mean the mask.’

Nelson is even happier now that he sent the devil mask away for DNA and fingerprint tests. If the attacker has form, which is a real possibility, they’re a step closer to an arrest.

‘Pretty stupid of the assailant to throw away the mask,’ says Tim. ‘He must have known that we’d get something from it.’

‘Maybe he just panicked,’ says Nelson. ‘It’s hard to think clearly in the heat of the moment.’

‘Or maybe it meant something else,’ says Judy. ‘A sign or something.’

‘What do you mean?’ asks Nelson.

‘Well, it was Halloween,’ says Judy. ‘Maybe the devil mask was a kind of occult touch.’

Judy sounds slightly defensive but of course the only person likely to laugh at such a theory is currently in Intensive Care.

‘Cloughie was in La Choza on Thursday night,’ says Tim. ‘They do all sorts of things for Halloween. The Day of the Dead and all that Mexican stuff.’

Judy laughs. ‘I’d pay good money to see Cloughie in La Choza.’

‘Seems to have impressed Cassandra Blackstock though,’ says Tim. ‘After all, they ended up in bed together.’

‘That’s as maybe,’ says Nelson, a shade disapprovingly. ‘But it might be worth going back to La Choza. It’s not impossible that someone followed them from the restaurant. People will remember them. Cassandra’s a very striking woman.’

‘You can say that again,’ says Tim.

‘No thanks,’ says Nelson. ‘Now let’s get on. We’ve got a lot to do. Tim, you work your charm at the restaurant and the pub. Which one was it?’

‘The Wheatsheaf.’

Nelson laughs. ‘That’s more Cloughie’s taste. A real drinkers’ pub. They’ll remember them all right. We’ll do some more door-to-door in Spalding and I’ve organised a leaflet drop too. Free-phone number if anyone’s got any information. We need to talk to Clough as well, get a proper statement from him. Judy, will you do that?’

‘Of course,’ says Judy. ‘I’m going to see him after work.’

‘Well, he may not be up to giving a statement today,’ says Nelson. ‘He was pretty groggy when I saw him.’ On Saturday night, after his brief burst of speech, Clough had fallen into an uneasy sleep. Nelson had left Lindsay at his bedside. He had called on Sunday to hear that Clough was ‘progressing well’ and due to be moved to a normal ward on Monday. Even so, Nelson doubts that Clough will be up to providing a coherent witness statement. It’s good of Judy to visit him though. The two are closer than you’d think.

‘Give him our love,’ says Tim.

That seems a rather metrosexual way of putting it but Nelson can’t think of a better phrase offhand. ‘Let’s get to work,’ he says.

Ruth doesn’t know how it happened but, on her way home, she finds herself taking the turning for Hunstanton and Blackstock Hall. She very much hadn’t planned to attend the day’s shoot. She has plenty of work to do; the sensible thing would be to drive home after her tutorials and put in a few hours’ marking before collecting Kate from the childminder. Instead, here she is, driving across the flat fields towards the house on the edge of the marshes.

As she parks on the verge, she can see the camera crew busy in the grounds. The camera van is parked in the sheep field and, as Ruth gets closer, she can see a man with a furry microphone following Nell as she walks slowly around the house towards the pets’ burial ground. Sally Blackstock is watching from the front door.

‘Hallo, Ruth,’ she greets her warmly. ‘Are you going to do another interview?’

‘No.’ Ruth suddenly feels rather embarrassed. ‘I just came to see what was going on.’

‘Oh, I’m the same,’ says Sally. ‘I’m absolutely fascinated by all this film stuff. Mind you, I wouldn’t like to be in front of the camera. They were filming Cassie this morning and she was an absolute natural. I don’t know how she does it.’

‘Is she OK?’ asks Ruth. ‘After what happened to Clough . . . David?’

‘Oh, she was very upset about that,’ says Sally, shepherding Ruth into the house and towards the welcoming Aga. ‘She seems terribly keen on this chap. But she spoke to the hospital this morning and they say he’s out of danger.’

Ruth has had the same message from Judy. All the same, it doesn’t answer the question of why Clough was attacked in the first place. If she were Cassandra, she’d be feeling nervous to say the least.

‘In a way,’ says Sally confidingly, ‘I’m enjoying being able to look after Cassie a bit. We haven’t always had the easiest of relationships, especially when she was a teenager. Mothers and daughters, you know.’

Ruth does know. The closest relationship in her life is with her daughter. What will she do when Kate gets to the scary teenage years? At least Nelson has some experience of adolescent girls; Ruth will be on her own.

In the kitchen, she finds Old George grumpily reading
The Times
and – oh God – Frank drinking tea and discussing books with Blake.

Frank stands up when he sees her. ‘Ruth!’

‘Oh,’ says Sally in her vague way, ‘I forgot you knew each other. Would you like a cup of tea, Ruth? I’ve just made a fresh pot.’

‘Thank you,’ says Ruth.

‘Hallo, Ruth,’ says Blake. ‘We were just discussing Thoreau.’

‘Oh,’ says Ruth, trying to remember who Thoreau is. Didn’t he write something about a pond?

Blake puts on what she already recognises as his quoting voice, ‘“If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy . . . that is your success. All nature is your congratulation . . .”’

There’s no answer to this, though Ruth wishes Cathbad were there to attempt one.

‘This is a fascinating place,’ says Blake in his normal voice. ‘When you stand on the beach here, it’s as if you’re standing at the very end of the earth.’

Old George looks up from his newspaper where he is ringing the Deaths with a red pen. ‘You live on the edge of the Saltmarsh, don’t you, Ruth?’

‘Yes,’ says Ruth, wondering how on earth he knows this.

‘Then the sea’s coming for you,’ he says. ‘That’s what my mother used to say. The seas are rising. Soon your little house will be swept away.’

‘Isn’t it time for your nap?’ says Sally.

‘Did you hear about the Bronze Age body found near here having a genetic link to your family?’ asks Ruth, hoping to steer the conversation away from the apocalypse.

‘No,’ says George suspiciously. ‘What body?’

Ruth elaborates, feeling that she isn’t doing a very good job of explaining about Bronze Age settlements and burial practices.

‘So this woman died, what, four thousand years ago and you say she’s related to my family?’ says George. ‘Preposterous.’

It isn’t going well. ‘That’s what makes it so interesting,’ says Ruth. ‘The Bronze Age is the time when people stopped moving around, stopped being nomadic hunter-gathers basically, and formed settled communities. The DNA link shows that there must have been a settled population here for thousands of years.’

‘The landscape must have been very different four thousand years ago,’ says Blake.

‘It was similar in some ways,’ says Ruth. ‘This would still have been marshy, tidal land. Lynn, as in King’s Lynn, is the Celtic word for tidal lake. Of course, if you go further back, things were very different. Only ten thousand years ago Britain was still linked to mainland Europe. You could walk to Scandinavia from Norfolk.’

‘Ridiculous,’ says Old George.