The Ghost Fields (Ruth Galloway) (26 page)

‘Who lives in this room?’ Nelson is asking.

‘The Mummy Rabbit and the Daddy Rabbit,’ says Kate. ‘They sleep in the same bed.’

Where did she get that idea?

Ruth and Nelson drink their tea and watch Kate playing. Ruth always finds these moments unsettling. It’s as if they are playing at being a family, but when his allotted time is up, Nelson leaves and goes back to his real home. Kate seems to accept these partings with equanimity but Ruth finds it hard sometimes.

‘Are Clough’s family with him?’ she asks. ‘They live in Norfolk, don’t they?’

‘His mum does. She’s at the hospital now. Johnson was trying to persuade her to go home to get some rest. I’ve never heard Clough mention his father.’

‘There’s a brother isn’t there?’

‘Yes. He’s there too. Looks a right layabout but at least he’s there to support his mum.’

Ruth thinks Nelson looks sad. She knows how close he is to his team. He feels responsible for them. It’s part of his apparently endless paternal streak. ‘He’ll be OK,’ she says. ‘He’s tough. Cathbad says so.’

Nelson smiles faintly. ‘If Cathbad says so, it must be right.’

‘Who do you think did it?’ asks Ruth. ‘Is it linked to the attack on Cassandra?’

‘You’d better watch it, Ruth,’ says Nelson. ‘You’re starting to think like a policeman.’

‘So you think they are linked?’

Nelson sighs. ‘Clough was with Cassandra last night.’

‘Really? Were they on a date then?’

‘That’s one word for it. Clough left Cassandra’s flat early this morning. Someone was lying in wait, jumped out and stabbed him. Were they trying to get Cassandra? I don’t know, but it must be a possibility.’

‘Pretty hard to mistake Clough for a woman.’

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’

‘Have you spoken to Cassandra?’

‘Tim has, and Judy said she turned up at the hospital this afternoon. Said she seemed pretty upset, but it could all be an act.’

‘Why would it be an act? She can’t be involved. I mean, she was attacked herself.’

‘She
said
she was attacked,’ says Nelson.

‘But she couldn’t have hit herself on the head.’

‘Stranger things have happened.’

‘Seems a bit far-fetched to me. Don’t you always say that the obvious solution is usually the correct one?’

‘I say a lot of things,’ says Nelson. ‘But it hasn’t got me very far in this case. I think it all comes back to the Blackstocks. Remember, Clough just found out that he was related to them.’

Ruth stares. ‘Do you think someone attacked him because of that?’

‘I don’t know. Cloughie turned up at the shoot on Wednesday, didn’t he? Was he going on about having a DNA link to the Blackstocks?’

‘He did mention it, yes.’

‘Who was there?’

‘Me, Chaz, Cassandra, Nell and Blake. Cathbad’s friend Hazel was there too.’

‘And all the film crew.’

‘Yes.’ Ruth watches Kate turning the windmill sails. ‘But you can’t think any of these people were involved.’

‘I don’t know what to think but two people have been attacked. Not to mention the poor sod at the pig farm.’

‘Any luck with the DNA from the bones?’

‘No. We should get the results soon but that might not get us much further.’

‘Remember my Bronze Age body was a Blackstock too.’

‘There are too many bloody Blackstocks,’ says Nelson. And they sit in silence for a while, watching Kate arrange her Sylvanians in size order.

CHAPTER 24

Nelson is at his desk early on Saturday morning. Michelle doesn’t complain, even though Nelson had promised her a trip to the garden centre. She knows that Nelson has to feel that he’s doing something. It would drive him mad just to sit at home waiting for news.

The first thing Nelson does is to ring the hospital. No change. Clough is still stable but critical. ‘That’s good news,’ says the nurse. Nelson puts the phone down, musing on this paradox. How can it be good news to continue being critically ill? But at least Clough is still hanging on in there and, if he knows his sergeant, he will be fighting to stay alive. He loves life, does Cloughie: playing football, drinking pints, eating takeaways, chasing women. It’s a lifestyle that causes Clough much envious ribbing from his colleagues but, when Nelson thinks about it now, it seems a pretty good way to spend your time. Exercise, food, romance. Only the second of these is a constant in his own life. He too was a keen footballer in his youth but he hasn’t played for years. And as for romance . . . He shakes his head, not wanting to discuss this, even with himself. Instead he says a prayer to the God he only half believes in. Dear God, Our Lady and all the saints, please save Clough. Nelson’s mother will probably be arranging the flowers in her parish church, ready for mass tomorrow. Nelson makes a mental note to ring her later and ask her to pray too. Maureen Nelson has a hotline to God and her prayers are almost always answered.

Nelson looks over the evidence from yesterday. Tim has done a good job. All the witness statements are already on the computer, filed and cross-referenced. Clough was found at approximately five a.m. by a local newsagent, Tomasz Karadzas, who was on his way to open his shop. Mr Karadzas didn’t attempt to move Clough but he covered him with his coat and called an ambulance. For this alone, thinks Nelson, he deserves a citizenship medal. In fact he’ll nominate him for one. There’s no doubt that Clough would have died if he’d been left there much longer. There don’t seem to be any witnesses to the actual attack. Everyone in the vicinity in Spalding claimed to be tucked up safely in their beds at three o’clock in the morning. None of the residents of the mews had heard anything. Tim has tracked down the minicab driver, who said that he’d waited on the High Street for five minutes and, when no one appeared, simply drove on to his next job. No, he didn’t hear anything or see anyone running away. This must mean that the assailant went the other way, back through the mews, which may suggest some local knowledge. Tim asked the driver why he didn’t go looking for his missing passenger. ‘Get outta my cab at night?’ had been the answer. ‘You must be kidding, mate.’

Officers have carried out a fingertip search of the area. There’s only one item that looks potentially interesting. It’s a Halloween mask, a crude red devil’s face, found in the alleyway near Clough’s body. Nelson decides to send the mask off for DNA analysis. It’s possible that it contains traces of sweat or even hair. Again, the DNA won’t be useful unless it matches someone currently on the register, but you never know. At any rate, it’s the only lead they have.

As he fills in the DNA request, Nelson also makes a note to chase on the pig farm remains. Testing can take months but, in emergencies, it’s possible to get results in twenty-four hours. Nelson believes in treating every case as if it’s an emergency.

Nelson reads through the transcript of Tim’s interview with Cassandra. There’s no reason to doubt the girl but there’s something about her that Nelson doesn’t quite trust. It’s not her beauty. Nelson likes beautiful women; after all, he married one. It’s more a certain theatricality, a suspicion that she enjoyed her moment in the limelight the other day. Then again, she is an actress. It’s not a crime to enjoy being the centre of attention. But if Clough had been lured to the alleyway where his attacker was hiding, there was only one person who could have done the luring. Either that or someone is out to get both Cassandra and her new boyfriend. A jealous lover? Again, that’s possible. Women who look like Cassandra always attract jealous lovers. Nelson decides to look into her background and generally keep an eye on Miss Blackstock. His fears about her possible blood relationship to Clough he keeps to himself. If Cassandra is secretly Clough’s half-sister, there’s nothing he can do about it now. He just hopes that they used contraception last night.

Tim comes in at nine. His hair is wet, as if he’s just come from the gym. Nelson compliments him on his work yesterday.

‘Did you input all the data yourself?’

‘Yes. Came in last night and did it. I didn’t think any Intel people would be around. Any news on Cloughie?’

‘No change. I’ll pop into the hospital later.’

‘No change is good news though, isn’t it? It means he isn’t any worse.’

It means he isn’t any better either, thinks Nelson. Tim’s optimistic outlook irritates him slightly but then, Tim hasn’t known Clough for long and he did do a good job at the crime scene yesterday. He means well.

‘The hospital said it was good news,’ he concedes.

‘Are you going to ring Judy and tell her?’

‘Later.’ Nelson looks at the clock. ‘I’ll let her have a lie-in first.’

‘She did look knackered yesterday,’ says Tim.

‘I wish she’d just bloody go on maternity leave,’ says Nelson. ‘But she’s insisting on working right up to the last minute.’

‘My sister was the same,’ says Tim. ‘Said she wanted to use all her maternity leave after the baby was born.’

Tim doesn’t talk about his family much, thinks Nelson, and when he does, it’s always like this. Inoffensive little snippets that don’t really tell you anything. Well, he’s a private person. Nelson respects that. It makes him hard to get to know though.

‘I’m going to pop into Costa for coffee and a Danish,’ says Tim now. ‘Do you want anything?’

It is always Clough who does the food run. He seems to feel the need to eat almost constantly although, annoyingly, never appears to put on any weight. Nelson feels that he ought to eat something in Clough’s honour but he’s just not hungry.

‘Just get me a black coffee,’ he says. ‘That’s a good lad.’

Jesus, he thinks, as Tim’s footsteps die away. I’m starting to call the young officers ‘lad’. I really am getting old.

Ruth often finds Saturday evenings hard. The day is pure joy – a lie-in (if Kate allows it), the chance to spend some proper time with her daughter, a glass of wine or two after Kate has gone to bed – but the evening still feels like a time when you should be going out or settling down with your partner for a slobby evening of takeaway and crap TV. Ruth works hard to make the weekends fun, to do things with Kate, not just sit around imagining the rest of the world enjoying a Waltons-style family life. Today they have been to the park, to a cafe for lunch and to an afternoon showing of a Disney film.

Back at the cottage, Ruth struggles to stave off that Saturday-evening feeling by making an elaborate meal of mushroom risotto. Unfortunately Kate picks out all the mushrooms because they taste slimy. After supper, Ruth turns on the television to hear, on local news, that ‘the man found stabbed in Spalding has been identified as off-duty police officer David Clough from Hunstanton’. Off-duty police officer. How dull it sounds, how run of the mill. Nothing like the reality as Ruth imagines it: Nelson pacing his office in King’s Lynn, Clough’s mother by his bedside, Judy and Cathbad attempting to carry on as normal. Judy had texted Ruth earlier, saying that Clough was ‘stable’. She has heard nothing else and, it appears, there is nothing else to say.

Ruth turns off the television and she and Kate play a rather fractious game with the Sylvanian windmill, which, to Ruth’s dismay, has become a prison.

‘Who told you about prisons?’ she asks. If it was Nelson, she’ll kill him.

‘They’re in
The Wind in the Willows
,
’ says Kate. ‘We had it at school.’

That’s OK then. You can’t argue with classic children’s literature. Or can you? It’s all rather nasty as far as Ruth can remember. And didn’t Kenneth Grahame’s son kill himself?

After another half-hour of Daddy Mouse escaping from prison dressed as Mummy Mouse, Ruth announces that she is going to run Kate’s bath.

‘I don’t want a bath,’ says Kate.

‘Of course you do,’ says Ruth. ‘The Sylvanians are always having baths. Look at their lovely bathroom in the windmill.’

‘Flint never has a bath.’

Flint, who is sitting on the sofa, closes his eyes in silent agreement. Before Ruth can get into an argument about the pros and cons of bathing, the phone rings.

‘Is this a bad time?’ It’s Frank.

‘No,’ says Ruth. ‘It’s fine.’