cockerel…’
‘So we’re looking for a deranged Robert Graves fan?’
Max laughs. ‘Or someone addicted to classic TV. I don’t know, Ruth. What does seem clear is that someone is trying to scare you.’
‘To warn me off the Norwich site?’
‘Possibly. It’s no secret that you’re involved. You had quite a high profile in that other case, didn’t you? The Lucy Downey case.’
Ruth is silent. She had tried to keep as low a profile as possible (only Nelson knew, for example, that it was she, not the police, who had found Lucy) but she supposes that things always leak out. In any case, it would not be hard to work out that she, as head of Forensic Archaeology, would be involved in both cases.
‘They’ll have to work harder than that to scare me,’ she says at last.
Max smiles. ‘Good for you.’ There is another silence, a rather different one this time. Then he says, almost shyly, ‘Ruth. Will you have dinner with me? One day next week. Not at the Phoenix. Somewhere nicer.’
Ruth looks at him, sitting at ease on her sagging armchair, his long legs folded under him. Beside her, Flint’s purrs increase. She shouldn’t say yes. She is a pregnant woman. She doesn’t need this sort of complication. Max smiles at her. She notices, for the first time, that one of his front teeth is slightly chipped.
‘All right,’ she says, ‘I’d like to.’
When he has gone, Ruth is so tired that she goes straight to bed without even checking that Flint has enough food for the night (he wakes her up later to remind her about this). Lying on her bed, she can still hear Max’s Range Rover driving slowly along the narrow road. Ten minutes later, her security light comes on again. But Ruth does not get up.
CHAPTER 16
The DNA results show that the body under the doorstep is a girl. The post-mortem confirmed that the child is less than six years old. Father Hennessey, Nelson decides, has some explaining to do.
This time there is no cosy walk in the grounds. Nelson interviews the priest at the local police station. A car is sent to fetch him and when he arrives Nelson is sitting unsmiling behind a desk. Clough is also in the room and as Hennessey enters Nelson says into the tape machine, ‘Interview commencing at fourteen hundred hours. Present: Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson and Detective Sergeant David Clough.’
Father Hennessey smiles politely and takes a seat opposite Nelson. He shows no surprise at his hostile reception nor does he make any attempt at small talk. He waits calmly for Nelson’s first question.
‘Father Hennessey,’ he’s damned if he’s going to call him ‘Father’ again, ‘you mentioned two children who went missing in 1973.’
They have looked them up, of course. Nelson was hoping to find Elizabeth Black’s dental records to compare them to the skull but there is no record of Elizabeth ever visiting a dentist. And, after 1973, both children vanish completely.
‘Yes,’ says Father Hennessey, looking intently at Nelson.
‘Could you tell us a bit more about their disappearance, please?’
Father Hennessey sighs. ‘It was in the evening. The children had some free time before bed and most of them were playing in the grounds. Supervised, of course. Sister Immaculata called them in about six and there was no sign of Martin and Elizabeth. At first we thought they were just hiding. Martin had a… mischievous sense of humour. But then, after we searched the house and the grounds, we began to get worried.’
He pauses and Nelson says, ‘When did you call the police?’
‘Almost immediately. They searched the house and grounds too. Some of the staff got quite upset. But nothing was found. Then they switched the search to the wider area.’
‘Did
Father Hennessey’s pale blue eyes look past Nelson. ‘I searched all night,’ he says at last. ‘The house, the grounds. Then I rode around Norwich on my motorbike, looking in alleyways, abandoned houses, anywhere I thought they might hide.’
Clough interjects. ‘You had a motorbike?’
‘It’s not against the law, you know,’ replies Hennessey mildly.
‘And in all this searching,’ Nelson cuts in, ‘did the police ever dig up the grounds?’
‘No.’
Goons, thinks Nelson. They were probably too taken in by this saintly motorbiking priest. They would never assume that he could have killed the children. Well, Nelson is different.
‘Did they look in the well?’ he asks.
Now Father Hennessey looks surprised. ‘No. It was boarded up, cemented over. No child could have fallen down it.’
Nelson says nothing, playing the silence game. This time he wins.
‘Have you found something in the well?’
‘We’ve found a child’s skull,’ Nelson tells him. ‘A child of five. A girl.’ ‘Under six’ is what the autopsy report says but he wants to shock Hennessey into saying something indiscreet.
Father Hennessy certainly looks shocked. His lips move silently, presumably in prayer. He asks, ‘Is it Elizabeth?’
‘We don’t know for certain,’ says Nelson, ‘yet.’ He sees no reason to add that they might never know as they have no DNA of Elizabeth’s. But he wants Hennessey to think he will find out. Nelson, the fearless seeker after truth, scourge of wrongdoers.
‘How could the skull have got in the well?’ asks Hennessey, still sounding shaken. He takes a sip of water. Suddenly he looks an old man.
‘You tell me.’
‘I have no idea.’ Sharper now. Hennessey is pulling himself together.
Silence again. Clough asks, ‘Did you get on well with Martin and Elizabeth?’ The change of subject, of tone. An old interrogation standby.
But Hennessey is equal to it. He looks directly at Clough. ‘Yes. They were lovely children, very bright, very loving. They’d had a traumatic time, with their mother dying and were… damaged.’
‘Damaged?’ says Nelson sharply. ‘What do you mean?’
‘These things leave scars, Detective Chief Inspector. Martin was angry, angry with his mother for leaving him, angry with the world for letting it happen. Elizabeth was easier. She was very sad, very insecure. She clung to
