A/N: I acknowledge that the title of this fic was taken from Elly Griffiths' most recent Ruth Galloway novel, "The Dark Angel" - a moment when Nelson is musing about Cathbad. While a knowledge of my earlier Spooks/Ruth Galloway crossover fic, "Don't Druids Worship The Full Moon?" is not absolutely necessary, that fic is only 3 chapters, and reading it might help set the scene for this story, which is a follow-on fic, set 18 months later.
There are no spoilers for the last two books in the Ruth Galloways series of novels. This fic is set somewhere before "The Chalk Pit" (which is novel #9)
Norfolk - a Monday in mid April 2015:
Ruth Evershed sits in her car, staring through her windscreen at the facade of the house. She can't decide whether she'd describe it as staid and sensible Norfolk Georgian, or garish Gothic monstrosity; to her mind, it's a bit of both. She'd edged her car along the narrow lane through the trees, and suddenly, there it was, rising out of the landscape ... Pickersgill House, once the home of Arthur and Maisie Pickersgill, originally from Sheffield. Having made his fortune by refining the process of electroplating, Arthur Pickersgill had moved up in the world, buying and renovating this old Georgian home close to the sea, only a handful of miles from King's Lynn. He'd added the Gothic wing, along with the turret, just because he could. Both Arthur and Maisie have been dead now for over one hundred and thirty years, and their many descendants have either returned to Yorkshire, or moved closer to London.
Ruth grabs the lightest and smallest of her bags from the back seat, along with the keys she'd collected from the estate agent in King's Lynn. `This key will open the light grey door to your right,' Bronwyn, the estate agent had said. `The double doors at the front lead into the main house, which is being renovated. If you happen to go in there, our insurance policy can't cover you should something happen.'
Why Bronwyn had been concerned about Ruth being covered by their insurance, and what could possibly befall her in the main house, she doesn't know, and Bronwyn didn't clarify, but Ruth obediently heads to the smaller door at the right side of the house, and prepares to enter what is to be her home for the next month.
Ruth and Harry are taking a month away from work, or at least, Ruth is. Harry has promised to join her once he has ironed out a few creases in the current operation. Ruth believes he may never join her in Norfolk, but she's offering him a month alone with her, and she hopes he'll grasp the opportunity with both hands.
It is eighteen months since they had visited Norfolk, eighteen months since they'd met The Other Harry and Ruth - DCI Harry Nelson, of the Norfolk Constabulary, and his clever side-kick, archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway. The archaeologist had at first appeared to be the policeman's go-to woman where buried bodies were concerned, but it had not taken Ruth long to surmise that Ruth Galloway and Harry Nelson (or Nelson, as he preferred to be called) were much more to one another than professional collaborators. Dr Galloway has a small daughter whose paternity had not been divulged by her mother, so naturally, Ruth had put two and two together, and come up with a child conceived in a wild night of extra-marital love ... or lust; she's not fussy about the core motivation.
For Ruth's Harry, the trip had been bittersweet, confirming the death of the young man he'd once believed to be his illegitimate son, and beginning his personal relationship with his senior intelligence analyst. Ruth has fond memories of their visit to King's Lynn eighteen months earlier, not the least of which is the night she and Harry had spent together in his hotel room. That had not been the first time they'd made love, but it had been the first time they'd made love while sober. Just three months after returning to London, she'd moved in with him, and they've been together ever since.
This month away is meant to be their chance to revisit the environment in which they'd been thrown together. As Ruth sees it, every day Harry spends in London when he could be with her is a day wasted. He appears to be umbilically attached to his office, and especially to the current operation, an operation which was meant to have been wrapped up a week ago.
"I'll join you on the weekend," he'd said hopefully, but Ruth hadn't believed him.
What is needed is another body ... a mystery which will draw him away from London, and to Norfolk, and ultimately back into her arms, and her bed. Ruth pushes open the front door - side door, actually - to Pickersgill House, and what greets her is like a page out of a story book. Her eyes are drawn upwards to the staircase, which winds its way up to two more storeys.
"Holy cow," she says aloud, and not bothering to close the door behind her, she hurries through the rooms on the ground floor, before taking the stairs to the next storey, and then a third floor, which is little more than a landing off which is a circular shaped room in the turret.
Ruth has to ring Harry. If he's in a meeting, or on the phone, she doesn't care. He is meant to be with her. He had planned to be with her.
"Ruth," he answers curtly, "is anything wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong. I just wanted to tell you about the house."
"This house in Norfolk," he says, matter-of-factly.
"Yes." Ruth hears his heavy sigh, but she is not deterred. She'll do anything short of selling her soul to get him here ... with her, and the sooner the better. "There's a turret room, and in this turret is a bedroom, with views to the sea. I've chosen that room for us. The bed is enormous, and it's soft .. and very comfy and -"
"Ruth -"
"The stairs curl upwards in a spiral. Harry .. it's beautiful. It's part Gothic Hideaway, part Downton Abbey ... minus the servants huddling downstairs, plotting to poison us, of course." Hearing his chuckle, she knows she is almost there. "And the kitchen is big ... and I mean big. We could hold a dinner party for twenty .. were we to know twenty people in Norfolk."
"We could invite the policeman and the archaeologist."
"That sounds like the title of a murder mystery - The Policeman and the Archaeologist."
"Or a romance novel," Harry says lightly.
"I miss you," she says at last.
"I think I can make it before Saturday, Ruth. Maybe Thursday."
"What about tomorrow?"
"We'll see." Ruth hears a voice in the background, a voice which sounds a lot like Dimitri Levendis'. "Look .. I have to go," Harry says quickly. "If I get home in time I'll call you tonight."
And he hangs up before she is able to tell him she loves him. She sighs heavily, hoping her call to Harry has had the desired effect. Her phone suddenly rings, and she answers it, not bothering to check the caller ID. "Harry?" she says expectantly.
"Sorry, no. It's Bronwyn," says a young female voice, "Bronwyn Sweeney ... from the estate agent."
"Oh, sorry. Is anything wrong?"
"Not wrong exactly," Bronwyn says carefully, "but you might have noticed there are two other keys on the keyring I gave you."
"Right," Ruth says, removing the keyring from the pocket in her skirt, and examining the other keys - another old door key, and a smaller brass key for a modern lock. "The small one is for the lock on the bedroom door on the top storey, but unless you have kids, you might not need it ... you know, to keep them out of your bedroom in the mornings."
"We don't have children," Ruth says quickly.
"Oh, that's good," Bronwyn replies, and Ruth wonders what Bronwyn has against children. Maybe she has one or two of her own, although Bronwyn barely looks old enough to be driving, let alone giving birth. "The other old door key is to the lower cellar door."
"There's a cellar?"
"The cellar door is on the ground floor, beneath the stairs. That only has one of those bolt slide locks, but were you to go into the cellar, you'll see a door on the far side of the room ... to your right. That door leads to an underground tunnel, which runs between the house and the sea."
Ruth has heard of such tunnels, and it may have been The Other Ruth who had told her. "Smugglers?" she says, hoping Bronwyn will understand what she means.
"Not these days, but when there's a high tide, the water can flow up the tunnel to as far as the house, so you might like to .. you know ... not use that door."
"Right," Ruth says distractedly, wondering why Bronwyn had thought to call her about a cellar she hadn't known existed, in which there is a door to a tunnel, which she also had not known existed, and from which she is warning her to stay away. Now armed with that knowledge, Ruth may be compelled to investigate. "Thanks," she says, already looking forward to exploring the cellar and beyond.
But first Ruth needs to unpack the car.
It is over an hour later when Ruth ventures under the stairs, and opens the door to the cellar. The steps down to cellar level are steep, and the cellar itself smells of damp. The only evidence she can find of a light is one of those pull switches, which turns on a lonely bulb hanging from a wooden beam. It lights her way down the steps, but leaves the rest of the cellar in a dull half-light. She lifts her torch - one of those lantern torches which are meant to be able to float on a choppy ocean, but Ruth is certain would sink like a stone were it put to the test - and peers around the room. Across one wall are shelves, and a work bench. Ruth tries to imagine Harry down here, doing a bit of DIY, and she can't. Harry is a man of many talents, none of them related to home improvement.
Ahead of her, in the wall opposite, is a wooden door. `The door to the tunnel', she says aloud, although there's no-one there to hear her.
Ruth suddenly realises she is wearing a woollen skirt, and leather boots with a low heel. If, on the other side of the door, there is mud, then she stands to ruin a rather decent pair of boots. She experiences a brief moment of panic, wondering whether she should first put in a call to The University of North Norfolk, where Dr Ruth Galloway has her office. She decides against it. Were Dr Galloway to warn her to not venture through that door, Ruth would do it anyway.
She takes the house keys from her pocket, and places the less used door key into the lock, wriggling it around until it slides fully into the lock. Then she turns it, pulling the door open, before slipping the keys back in her skirt pocket. Her heart is thudding, something which always happens whenever she breaks the rules, but rarely stops her. She lifts her torch until it is level with her eyes.
The tunnel is dark as pitch, but the lantern torch has a fresh 6 volt battery, so its beam shines brightly against the dark earth walls. The floor of the tunnel, while clearly moist, is not muddy, so she cautiously takes the four steps which lead to the tunnel floor, leaving the door wide open, with only the slightest glimmer of light shining from the solitary bulb hanging beside the cellar stairs. Ruth hopes she's not about to slip and fall, hitting her head on something. No-one knows where she is, and were she to fall unconscious, she might never be found.
Now she is in the tunnel, Ruth is surprised that she is able to stand up without her head touching the ceiling, although a man of Harry's height will have to stoop a little, and DCI Nelson would have to bend over, no doubt complaining about it. Now she is here, she has no particular plan about what to do next. Although the idea appeals to her, she won't venture far along the tunnel. She has no idea when high tide is due, so she'll not risk getting caught in the tunnel by tidal water. She thinks she might wander along the tunnel for a little way, and then back to the steps.
Ruth has lowered the torch beam so that she can see the floor of the tunnel ahead of her, when the light beam catches something white. At first Ruth thinks it's a piece of fabric, like a shirt sleeve, or a pillow case. She ventures closer, keeping the torch trained on the white object. Even before a shape emerges, she knows what it is. What else could it be?
"Cripes," she says aloud, hurrying towards the white object. "Welcome to Norfolk," she adds, "home of tunnels, crypts, archaeologists, speeding policeman, and ..."
Now the white object is at her feet, she can clearly see that there are more white objects, lying just above the level of the tunnel floor, parallel, curved, white objects. Further along the tunnel floor are more white objects, large in size. To Ruth's practised eye, the larger white objects, partially covered by drying mud, resemble pelvic bones.
Ruth breathes deeply ... once, twice, three times she breathes, before taking her mobile phone from her other skirt pocket, and with one hand operating her phone, she takes several photographs of the scene. She pockets her phone, before kneeling down closer to the remains, in an attempt to determine its age. To her unpractised eye the skeleton is of an adult.
"Who are you?" she asks aloud. "Where did you come from? Are you a man or a woman? Modern or ancient?"
Ruth quickly turns, and hurries back to the four steps which will lead her back into the cellar. She leaves open that door, as well as the cellar door, and then heads straight to the kitchen to make herself a strong mug of coffee. Once she is sitting at the large pine table, and her heartbeat has steadied, she takes her phone from her pocket, and makes a call.