His voice breaks when he says her name. He rubs his eyes.
Ruth says gently, ‘You said she died?’
Max looks up and now his eyes are hard. He stares at Ruth as if he doesn’t see her.
‘She died,’ he says. And he is not talking to Ruth but to someone else, himself perhaps, and she knows, somehow, that it is twelve-year-old Martin Black who is speaking.
‘We wanted to get to our dad. I’d had it all planned. I’d got his address from Father Hennessey’s records. He always let me go into his office. I stole enough food to last us. I’d even got a tent from the storehouse – Father Hennessey used to take us camping sometimes. It was all fixed but Elizabeth… she didn’t really want to go. She liked it at the home. She loved Sister James, the nun who taught the little ones. She felt safe there. But she loved me more.’ For a second he sounds almost triumphant. ‘She loved me so she went with me. Only thing she wanted to take was her blasted stuffed dog.’
And Ruth sees Max’s bed on the boat: the classical text open on the side table and the stuffed toy on the pillow. Elizabeth’s dog.
‘At first it was OK. We stayed in an abandoned warehouse the first night and then we headed for London. I’d brought our old school uniforms. I knew they wouldn’t be looking for children in uniform and I was lucky. There was a school trip to London that day so we tagged along behind them. No one noticed us. But when we got to London, that’s when it started.’
‘What started?’
‘Elizabeth got sick. She’d always had lots of sore throats and colds so at first I thought it was that. I stole some throat stuff for her and she seemed better for a while. We were staying outside Swindon in an empty school. We had to head west, you see, to Holyhead. Jesus – that school. It had big snakes and ladders painted on the playground, on the tarmac. Elizabeth was scared of them. At night she thought they were coming to get her. We were sleeping in the staffroom. They had sofas in there. But she had a fever, she used to scream. It was like she didn’t know me. She used to scream for our mum.’
His voice has all but died away. He is sitting slumped forward, head in hands. Flint has abandoned him. Ruth doesn’t want to hear any more. The thought that the five-year-old Elizabeth might have died in that empty school, with only her twelve-year-old brother to care for her, is almost too awful to contemplate. And, if she can’t contemplate it, what about Max, who has kept this secret all these years? But Ruth also feels that, having started telling his story, it would be good for him to finish it. So she prompts gently, ‘What happened?’
Max looks at her, his gaze anguished. ‘She died. Just like that. I woke up one morning and she was dead. Lying on the sofa with a rug over her and she was dead. Her little face was cold…’ He turns away and, after a few seconds, continues in a harder voice. ‘I buried her in the school grounds. They had a little vegetable patch where the earth was soft and I buried her there. I was going to bury Wolfie, her dog, with her but, when it came to it, I couldn’t bear to. It smelt of her, you see. I buried her and I went on. I suppose Nelson will dig her up now. Bit of a shock for some poor primary school.’ He laughs harshly.
‘What happened to you?’
‘Oh, I got to Ireland but when I saw my dad, he was drunk as a lord, didn’t know me from Adam, so I didn’t hang around. I lived rough for a while and got taken in by some travellers, gypsies. They were kind to me. I used to help with the horses, they went to lots of horse fairs and they had ponies that just roamed free, even in the cities. The children went to local schools sometimes. I went with them and got interested in history again. Met a teacher in one school who liked me and he encouraged me to stay and take some exams. I lived with him and his family. They were kind too. I called myself Max Grey by then. I took O Levels and A Levels and, eventually, got into Sussex. End of story.’
‘Why did you come back here?’ asks Ruth.
‘Well, mostly it was the Roman dig. I am an archaeologist after all. But I suppose I wanted to see the home again. I wanted to but I was scared. DCI Nelson said that runaways almost always go back to the place that they ran away from. Well, I suppose I was no exception. Then, when you were excavating the site, I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to tell you, Ruth, I really did.’
He is looking at her earnestly. Martin Black has vanished and he is Max Grey again, soft-spoken and unthreatening.
‘That’s OK,’ she says, ‘it must have been… awful for you.’ She is aware how inadequate this sounds.
‘I couldn’t face going to the site at first, but then I couldn’t resist it. I suppose I just wanted to see it one last time. Then, seeing Father Hennessey like that…’
‘I think he was very fond of you.’
‘He was really good to me. I was a delinquent in those days. Got into fights, swore, stole, but he never gave up on me. He always thought I’d make something of myself.’
‘He was right,’ says Ruth.
‘Was he?’ They look at each other and suddenly the moment is charged, by sadness, understanding and, unexpectedly, by something else, something that makes Ruth blush and turn away.
‘Ruth?’
But the spell is broken by the doorbell. Judy Johnson is on the doorstep, an overnight bag in her hand.
‘Hi, Ruth. I’ve come to stay for a few nights.’
CHAPTER 25
The DNA results are waiting on Nelson’s desk when he gets into work in the morning. He studies them, black coffee in hand. They prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that Roderick Spens is related to the body found under the doorway. More than that, they show that Roderick and the dead child share a common male ancestor. Nelson frowns down at the printout in his hand, thinking hard.
Finding Martin Black had been a bolt from the blue. Despite his theory about offenders returning to the scene of the crime, Nelson never honestly expected to find Martin Black wandering around the ruins of the former children’s home. And never in a million years did he connect the smug archaeologist who seems to dog Ruth’s footsteps with the twelve-year-old boy who went missing. ‘People grow up,’ he always tells his team, ‘you’re not looking for a little boy, you’re looking for a man in his forties.’ But, even so, the distance between Dr Max Grey and desperate runaway Martin Black seemed too vast to be straddled by one person.
And his story – his story had been heart-rending. The little girl dying in the empty school (possibly of meningitis, Nelson suspects), the grief-stricken brother burying the body. It is just outlandish enough to be true. Well, they’ll know when they find the school and dig up their vegetable patch. The press will love that.
Briefing is at nine. Tanya has her notebook open in front of her, Clough enters the room still chewing, Judy is drinking tea.
‘Everything all right at Ruth’s?’ Nelson asks her.
‘Not a sound all night.’
‘Is Ruth OK?’
Judy looks at him curiously. ‘She seems fine. She had a friend there when I turned up.’
‘Who?’
‘That archaeologist chap. The one who was here yesterday.’
‘We need to talk about him,’ says Nelson. He tells the team about the unexpected appearance of Martin Black.
‘Bloody hell,’ says Clough, still chasing stray bits of breakfast around his mouth, ‘was it really him?’
‘Father Hennessey verifies it. According to Black, he and his sister ran away, hoping to get to Ireland. Elizabeth became ill and died in a deserted school outside Swindon.’
‘Do you believe him?’’ asks Clough.
‘I never believe anyone without checking first. But, in any case, we’ve established that the body at Woolmarket Street can’t be Elizabeth Black. We’ve had the DNA results,’ he pauses impressively, ‘and they show that Sir Roderick Spens and the dead child share a common male ancestor.’
‘So it could be Annabelle Spens?’ gasps Judy.
