The Ghost Fields (Ruth Galloway) (6 page)

Ruth is also thinking about TV. Specifically she is thinking about Frank Barker, the American academic who appeared with her on
Women Who Kill
. This is because she has just received an email from him.

Hi, Ruth
(writes Frank, with no acknowledgement of the fact that he hasn’t been in contact for over a year).
I’ve been thinking a lot about you. I expect you heard about the WWII plane that was found near you? Well, an American TV company wants to do a programme about it. Turns out the pilot may have been in the US Air Force but he was really a Norfolk boy. Anyway, this company wants to do a documentary about American airmen in Norfolk, with a bit of human interest thrown in. They’re going to contact the family to see if they want to be involved (apparently the daughter lives in Vermont).

So, Ruth, it looks like I might be back in Norfolk before Christmas. If so, it would be great to meet up. Do drop me a line.

All best,

Frank

Ruth stares at the email. She has a tutorial in ten minutes and should be preparing. Instead she lets herself think about Frank. She sees his tanned skin and greying hair, his loping athletic stride. But mostly she hears his voice, those warm Western tones that sounded reassuring even when he was talking about a long-dead Victorian murderess. ‘She was unjustly accused and I care about injustice.’ She hears Frank apologising for driving his car into hers; she remembers the look in his eyes when he said, ‘I’d like to see you again. Before I go back to the States.’ They had seen each other a few times and the relationship seemed on the verge of teetering into something else but, somehow, it hadn’t happened. Frank had gone back to America and they had corresponded for a while. There was even some talk of Ruth going to visit Frank in Seattle. But, again, the talk had come to nothing. Something – Kate? her work? Nelson? – kept holding Ruth back. But now he was coming to see her. Well, strictly speaking, he was coming to see the airfields, but hadn’t he said ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about you’ and ‘it would be great to meet up’? Ruth continues to stare at the screen.

As she does so, another email pings up. This one says: ‘Soil analysis: results’. Ruth reads quickly and reaches for her phone. Then she stops. She can hear her students scuffling outside. She hasn’t got time for a proper conversation. She’ll ring Nelson later. She closes her laptop and composes her face into a welcoming smile.

Nelson and Clough are in the middle of yet another field. This time the landscape is clearly in transition. The earth has been gouged and dissected. The grass has vanished under huge mounds of sand and cement. Work has definitely restarted at Devil’s Hollow. In fact, thinks Nelson, it’s no longer even a hollow. It’s now a square of churned-up soil. A sign by the gate tells non-existent passers-by that a luxury development of beachfront apartments is being created by Spens and Co. There’s no sign of the apartments yet but, if you look hard, you can just see the sea glimmering through the few remaining trees. Otherwise, it could be any building site anywhere in the country.

The digger stands, vibrating gently, in the middle of the field and next to it stands Barry West, looking unhelpful. He’s clearly longing to get back to work (and to the sandwiches in his cab).

‘This must be quite some job,’ says Nelson.

Barry says nothing. He looks exactly as he did on the day that the body was discovered. In fact he seems to be wearing exactly the same clothes.

‘When did work start up again?’ asks Nelson.

‘As soon as you lot finished messing around. A few weeks ago.’

Nelson decides to ignore the description of police forensic work as ‘messing around’. ‘Much more to do?’ he asks.

‘I’m nearly done. Building work starts next week.’

‘I want to talk to you about the day the plane was discovered,’ says Nelson. ‘Do you remember that day?’

‘Not going to forget it, am I? Bleeding dead body looking out at me.’

‘I wanted to ask you about earlier in the day, before you found the plane. Did anyone come to the field asking about the building work?’

Barry looks at them under lowered brows. Ruth once told Nelson that most Europeans have four per cent Neanderthal DNA but clearly this is only an average.

‘Yeah,’ he says at last. ‘Posh bloke. Long hair.’

Nelson and Clough look at each other. ‘Do you remember what he said?’

‘Was asking about the houses. How many there would be. That sort of thing. I told him that I only drove the digger.’

‘Did he say anything else that you remember?’

‘He said something about engine parts. I didn’t know what he was going on about. I thought he was talking about the digger. A lot of these posh types like to pretend that they know about machinery. Mr Spens is the same.’

But what if Chaz wasn’t just pretending to be Bob the Builder? thinks Nelson as he and Clough walk back to his car. What if Chaz knew the plane was there all along? After all, he must have played in these fields as a child. What if, in the course of some childish game, he had come across parts of the buried plane? And when he found out about the sale of the land, did he think that if the builders discovered the plane it would halt the development? What if he also calculated that the plane would make more of an effect if accessorised by a body?

Nelson looks back across the marshes. Blackstock Hall is clearly visible against the skyline, grey and forbidding. It’s not exactly the front garden but the new development will certainly be in the eyeline of the Hall’s occupants. What had Chaz said? That the sale of Devil’s Hollow would be ‘breaking up the estate’. An estate that would, presumably, belong to Chaz one day.

‘What do you think?’ he asks Clough as the car bumps along the unmade road.

‘Bloke should wash more often.’

‘About Chaz Blackstock. Why was he talking about engine parts? Do you think he knew the plane was here all along? After all, he was brought up here.’

Clough considers. ‘It’s possible. Grubbing about in the dirt, digging up buried planes, it’s the sort of thing boys do.’

Nelson’s elder daughter, Laura, had briefly been interested in engines. Her biggest treat had been when a local farmer allowed her to drive his tractor round the field. Nelson rather regretted it when this interest gave way to rather more stereotypically female concerns.

‘Girls too,’ he says. ‘Cassandra may have known too.’

‘But if they knew about the plane,’ says Clough, wincing as Nelson narrowly avoids a gate, ‘did they also know about Uncle Fred’s body?’

Nelson is about to answer when his phone rings. It’s on hands-free so he barks, ‘Yes?’

‘Nelson. It’s Ruth.’

‘Hi, Ruth. What is it? Has something happened to Katie?’

He hears Ruth sigh. Clough hears it too and grins.

‘Kate is fine. Enjoying her second day at school. Remember, you rang three times to find out about the first day?’

‘Has she done music again?’

‘She wasn’t “doing music”.’ He can hear the irritated quotation marks. ‘She was banging a tambourine. I wouldn’t book tickets for Carnegie Hall yet.’

Where? thinks Nelson. Aloud he says, ‘So why are you ringing?’

‘I’ve had the soil analysis results back on the body. The one found in the plane.’

‘And what do they tell us?’

‘The body was originally buried in anaerobic alkaline silt.’

‘Tell me that in English.’

Another sigh. ‘The plane was buried in chalky soil. Chalk’s alkaline but it drains well so you don’t get the skin preservation that you see in waterlogged anaerobic conditions.’

‘The plane looked pretty well preserved to me.’

‘Yes, metal’s no problem. Bone too. You get very well-preserved skeletons found in chalk. It’s just the way the skin was still attached.’

Nelson doesn’t think he’s ever going to forget the way the skin was still attached. He remembers Barry’s description of a ‘bleeding dead body looking at me’.

‘The way the skin was preserved was typical of marshy, boggy soil,’ Ruth is saying. ‘According to the soil analysis the body may have been buried fairly nearby – there are traces of marine life, for one thing – but in more marshy soil. Not the peat bogs, because they would have conserved it completely, but somewhere halfway between chalk soil and marshland. And it was wrapped in something. Remember I said that there were traces of something waxy on the bones?’

Nelson dimly remembers something of the sort. The trouble is, Ruth always gives him so much information that the important bits sometimes get filtered out.

‘Well, the body may have been wrapped in oilcloth, tarpaulin, something like that.’

‘Deliberately buried then? He didn’t just lie where he fell?’

‘It doesn’t look like it. No.’

There is a silence. Nelson thinks of the house rising up out of the flat landscape. ‘This marshy ground, could it be somewhere like the grounds of Blackstock Hall, for example?’

‘It’s possible.’

When Ruth has rung off, with promises to call later with news of Kate’s second day at school, Nelson turns to Clough.

‘I think it’s time we had another word with Old George. He was the only one around at the time that Fred went missing.’

‘Don’t forget the other brother who mysteriously disappeared.’

‘I won’t,’ says Nelson. ‘Wonder if his body’s buried in anaerobic whatsit too.’

‘Better go gently, boss. Remember Granddad’s already complained about us.’

‘I’ll take Johnson with me,’ says Nelson. ‘He can hardly get nasty with a pregnant woman.’

CHAPTER 4

Not far from Norwich (Norwich, Vermont, that is), Nell Blackstock Goodheart is reading a letter headed ‘The History Men: Bringing the Past to Life!’. She reads impatiently, getting some of the breakfast preserves on the paper. When she has finished, she calls to her husband, Blake, who is watering the plants on the porch.

‘Looks like they definitely want to make a film about Daddy.’

Blake Goodheart appears in the doorway, watering can in hand.

‘Who are “they”, honey?’

‘The TV people. Remember, I told you about them?’

She doesn’t show him the letter because she knows that the exclamation mark would cause him actual, physical pain.

Blake puts the watering can on the three-legged stool reserved for that purpose. Then he changes from his porch shoes (subtly different from his yard shoes) into leather slippers. Nell watches him. Forty years of marriage have made her supremely tolerant while never tempting her to join her husband in any of his foibles. She doesn’t own a pair of slippers and regularly gardens in her bare feet.

Blake joins his wife at the breakfast table and pours himself coffee.

‘Why would a television company want to make a film about Fred?’ He has never met his father-in-law, who died when Nell was three, but, along with the rest of the family, he always refers to him with familiarity. Fred’s shadow loomed large over Nell’s childhood, just as his picture – sombrely handsome in his pilot’s uniform – now looms over her nightstand. For over forty years Blake has gone to bed with that tense young face staring at him. It’s no wonder that they’re on first-name terms.

‘Well, you know they found his body in the plane. They’ve positively identified him as being the pilot.’ It will hardly be a body after all these years, she thinks. She doesn’t say this aloud though; Blake is squeamish about all aspects of life – and death. ‘It seems that they’re planning a programme about American airmen in Norfolk.’ She pronounces it ‘Nor-fork’. ‘And they want to include Daddy. Especially as he was born in those parts.’

‘But you wouldn’t want to get mixed up with something like that,’ protests Blake. ‘Television.’ The couple possess one small set, which is kept in Nell’s sewing room and reserved for the exclusive use of their grandchildren. But if Blake had his way, even this one concession to modern life would be banished. There’s nothing wrong with playing cribbage in the evenings. Besides, reception is terrible in the Green Mountains.

‘It’ll be a proper academic programme,’ says Nell. ‘Frank Barker’s presenting it. You know you liked his book about Victorian England.’