Ali xx
PS here’s the link to LZ as promised.
The third email is from her colleague David Brown. Subject:Tombland Dig. Ruth knows she should open this but instead she presses the link to enter the Lean Zone.
Chapter 7
Ruth’s day starts with a department meeting. Her predecessor, Phil, avoided group gatherings, preferring to waylay his staff in the canteen, where it was easier to get them to agree with him. Ruth hopes that having monthly meetings will create a sense of camaraderie and teamwork and will also stop the AGM taking what seems like days.
Camaraderie seems thin on the ground today. Bob Bullmore, the anthropology expert, is determined to talk about the new unisex toilets. Fiona Green, Conservation and Bioarchaeology, wants to tell them about her recent paper on gender bias. David Brown, prehistory lecturer and Ruth’s personal irritant, disagrees with both of them. Peter Llewellyn (Cultural Heritage) says nothing. Eventually the meeting draws to a cantankerous close because lectures are starting. David remains behind. He’s very tall and he seems to cast a shadow over the whole room.
‘How was the Tombland skeleton?’ he asks. ‘I sent you an email last night.’
Ruth doesn’t apologise for not responding. She wants to break David of the habit of emailing at all hours of the day and night.
‘It was an interesting find,’ she says. ‘A complete skeleton, probably female, laid out as if for formal burial. I’ve sent off samples for carbon-14 dating and isotope analysis. We might even get DNA.’
‘Unlikely, if it’s an articulated skeleton,’ says David. This is one of the things that annoys Ruth about him. She knows very well that the process of putrefaction can destroy DNA and it seems to work faster with articulated remains. David does not need to point this out to her, the forensics expert.
‘Was there anything else?’ she says.
‘You know I’m on the board of the Friends of Tombland?’
‘Yes.’ Ruth had actually recommended David for the post, because she didn’t have time herself. She feels like reminding him of this.
‘Your friend Janet Meadows is on the board too.’
‘I know.’
‘She wants to put on a plague festival.’
‘A plague festival?’ This must have been what Janet wanted to talk about yesterday.
‘Well, an exhibition about the Norwich plague pits. But it’s nonsense. They haven’t found any plague pits in Norwich.’
‘I thought there was one near the coach park at Blackfriars?’ Ruth suddenly thinks of her school reunion in the Blackheath pub. She read once that the area took its name from plague pits dug there during the Black Death. She doesn’t share this nugget with David, who is still talking about Tombland.
‘Why would anyone bury their dead in the centre of the city? It’s just pandering to the ignorant. Tombs, plague, the Grey Lady, ring-a-ring-a-roses. It’s sensationalising archaeology.’
‘I thought you were keen on plagues.’ It’s one of David’s pet theories that, when the Beaker People came to Britain in the Bronze Age, they brought with them a deadly virus that wiped out the native population.
‘That’s different,’ says David. ‘Janet Meadows just wants to dress up as the Grey Lady and frighten tourists.’
Ruth thinks of Janet in her cloak and of Ted’s comment.Blimey, it’s the Grey Lady.
‘That’s unfair,’ she says. ‘Janet’s a serious historian.’
‘There’ll be a fight about this,’ says David, sounding as if he relishes the prospect. ‘And I hope you’ll be on my side.’
‘I’ll be on the side of truth,’ says Ruth, but only in her head. She doesn’t need Cathbad to tell her that truth can be a very slippery concept.
‘On balance, I think Samantha Wilson committed suicide,’ says Judy. ‘We may never know why.’
‘What about the ready meal in the microwave?’ says Nelson.
‘We can’t know what was in Samantha’s mind,’ says Judy. ‘But there’s no sign of forced entry. No suggestion that anyone was in the house with her. All the evidence points to her lying down on her bed and taking an overdose of sleeping pills. It’s very sad but it’s not suspicious. In my opinion.’
‘I’ve got the post-mortem results here.’ Nelson turns his screen to face Judy. ‘Chris Stephenson agrees with you. Cause of death: respiratory failure due to chemical overdose.’
