The Crossing Places

'Did you keep it? The bone, I mean.'

'It's at the station.'

Ruth takes a quick photo of the site and sketches a brief map in her notebook. This is the far west of the marsh; she has never dug here before. The beach, where the henge was found, is about two miles away to the east. Squatting down on the muddy soil, she begins laboriously bailing out the water, using a plastic beaker from her excavation kit.

Nelson is almost hopping with impatience.

'Can't we help with that?' he asks.

'No,' says Ruth shortly.

When the hole is almost free from water, Ruth's heart starts to beat faster. Carefully she scoops out another beakerful of water and only then reaches into the mud and exposes something that is pressed flat against the dark soil.

'Well?' Nelson is leaning eagerly over her shoulder.

'It's a body,' says Ruth hesitantly, 'but…'

Slowly she reaches for her trowel. She mustn't rush things. She has seen entire excavations ruined because of one moment's carelessness. So, with Nelson grinding his teeth beside her, she gently lifts away the sodden soil. A hand, slightly clenched, wearing a bracelet of what looks like grass, lies exposed in the trench.

'Bloody hell!' murmurs Nelson over her shoulder.

She is working almost in a trance now. She plots the find on her map, noting which way it is facing. Next she takes a photograph and starts to dig again.

This time her trowel grates against metal. Still working slowly and meticulously, Ruth reaches down and pulls the object free from the mud. It gleams dully in the winter light, the sixpence in the Christmas cake: a lump of twisted metal, semi-circular in shape.

'What's that?' Nelson's voice seems to come from another world.

"I think it's a torque,' says Ruth dreamily.

'What the hell's that?'

'A necklace. Probably from the Iron Age.'

'The Iron Age? When was that?'

'About two thousand years ago,' says Ruth.

Clough lets out a sudden bark of laughter. Nelson turns away without a word.

Nelson gives Ruth a lift back to the university. He seems sunk in gloom but Ruth is in a state of high excitement. An Iron Age body, because the bodies must surely be from the Iron Age, that time of ritual slaughter and fabulous treasure hoards. What does it mean? It's a long way from the henge but could the two discoveries possibly be linked?

The henge is early Bronze Age, over a thousand years before the Iron Age. But surely another find on the same site can't simply be coincidence? She can't wait to tell Phil.

Perhaps they should inform the press; the publicity might be just what the Department needs.

Nelson says suddenly, 'You're sure about the date?'

'I'm pretty sure about the torque, that's definitely Iron Age and it seems logical that the body was buried with it.

But we can do carbon 14 dating to be sure.'

'What's that?'

'Carbon 14 is present in the earth's atmosphere. Plants take it in, animals eat the plants, we eat the animals. So we all absorb carbon 14 and, when we die, we stop absorbing it and the carbon 14 in our bones starts to break down. So, by measuring the amount of carbon 14 left in a bone, we can tell its age.'

'How accurate is it?'

'Well, cosmic radiation can skew the findings – sun spots, solar flares, nuclear testing, that sort of thing. But it can be accurate within a range of a few hundred years. So we'll be able to tell if the bones are roughly from the Iron Age.'

'Which was when exactly?'

'I can't be that exact but roughly seven hundred BC to forty-three ad.'

Nelson is silent for a moment, taking this in, and then he asks, 'Why would an Iron Age body be buried here?'

'As an offering to the Gods. Possibly it would have been staked down. Did you see the grass around the wrist? That could have been a rope of some kind.'

'Jesus. Staked down and left to die?'

'Well maybe, or maybe it was dead before they left it here. The stakes would be just to keep it in place.'

'Jesus,' he says again.

Suddenly Ruth remembers why she is here, in this police car, with this man. 'Why did you think the bones might be modern?' she asks.

Nelson sighs. 'Some ten years ago there was a child that went missing. Near here. We never found the body. I thought it might be her.'

'Her?'

'Her name was Lucy Downey.'

Ruth is silent. Having a name makes it all more real somehow. After all, hadn't the archaeologist who discovered the first modern human given her a name? Funnily enough, she was called Lucy too.

Nelson sighs again. 'There were letters sent to me about the Lucy Downey case. It's funny, what you said earlier.'

'What?' asks Ruth, rather bemused.

'About ritual and that. There was all sorts of rubbish in the letters but one thing they said was that Lucy had been a sacrifice and that we'd find her where the earth meets the sky'

'Where the earth meets the sky,' Ruth repeats. 'But that could be anywhere.'

'Yes, but this place, it feels like the end of the world somehow. That's why, when I heard that bones had been found…'

'You thought they might be hers?'

'Yes. It's hard for the parents when they don't know.

Sometimes, finding a body, it gives them a chance to grieve.'

'You're sure she's dead then?'

Nelson is silent for a moment before replying, concentrating on overtaking a lorry on the inside. 'Yes,' he says at last. 'Five-year-old child, goes missing in November, no sign of her for ten years. She's dead alright.'

'November?'

'Yes. Almost ten years ago to the day.'

Ruth thinks of November, the darkening nights, the wind howling over the marshes. She thinks of the parents, waiting, praying for their daughter's return, jumping at every phone call, hoping that every day might bring news.

The slow ebbing away of hope, the dull certainty of loss.

'The parents,' she asks. 'Do they still live nearby?'

'Yes, they live out Fakenham way.' He swerves to avoid a lorry. Ruth closes her eyes. 'Cases like this,' he goes on, 'it's usually the parents.'

Ruth is shocked. 'The parents who killed the child?'

Nelson's voice is matter-of-fact, the Northern vowels very flat. 'Nine cases out of ten. You get the parents all distraught, news conferences, floods of tears and then we find the child buried in the back garden.'

'How awful.'

'Yes. But this case, I don't know, I'm sure it wasn't them.

They were a nice couple, not young, been trying for a baby for years and then Lucy came along. They adored her.'

'How dreadful for them,' says Ruth inadequately.

'Dreadful, yes.' Nelson's voice is expressionless. 'But they never blamed us. Never blamed me or the team. They still send me Christmas cards. That's why I-' He falters for a second. 'That's why I wanted a result for them.'

They are at the university now. Nelson screeches to a halt outside the Natural Sciences building. Students hurrying to lectures turn and stare. Although it is only two thirty, it is already getting dark.

'Thanks for the lift,' says Ruth slightly awkwardly. 'I'll get the bones dated for you.'

'Thanks,' says Nelson. He looks at Ruth for what seems to be the first time. She is acutely aware of her wild hair and mud-stained clothes. 'This discovery, might it be important for you?'

'Yes,' says Ruth. 'It might be.'

'Glad someone's happy.' As soon as Ruth is out of the car he drives off without saying goodbye. She doesn't think she will ever see him again.

CHAPTER 3

Nelson cuts across two lanes of traffic as he heads into King's Lynn. His car is unmarked but he makes it a point of honour always to drive as if he is pursuing a suspect. He enjoys the expressions on the faces of the clueless uniforms when, after pulling them in for speeding, he flourishes his warrant card. In any case, this route is so familiar that he could drive it in his sleep: past the industrial park and the Campbell's soup factory, along the London Road and through the archway in the old city wall. Doctor Ruth Galloway would be sure to tell him exactly how old this wall is: 'I can't be that exact but I estimate that it was built before lunch on Friday 1 February 1556'. But, to Nelson, it just represents a final traffic jam before he reaches the police station.