When the briefing is over, Nelson goes to his office to prepare for a tedious meeting on regional crime targets. His secretary, Leah, brings him coffee and then, unusually, seems disposed to chat.
慖 heard you talking about the Gaywood case,?she says. 慣hat抯 quite near me.?
慖s it??Leah must live somewhere, Nelson supposes, but he抯 never really thought about where.
慖 think my mum knew her. The woman who committed suicide.?
慡amantha Wilson??
慪es. Mum was very shocked when she heard.?
慦as she??Nelson is listening now.
慪es,?says Leah, heading towards the door. 態ut you never know when people are desperate, do you??
And she is gone, leaving the door swinging gently behind her.
Ruth is looking into a grave. Council workers digging up a street in the centre of Norwich have found what looks to be a human skull. Ruth is not too surprised by this. The road is in Tombland, the ancient area around the cathedral, and human skeletons have been found here before. She has decided to bring some of her students so that they can watch the excavation at first hand. They stand in a nervous and expectant group by the 慠oad Closed?sign while Ruth and Ted Cross from the field archaeology team consult the foreman.
慖 knew it was human at once,?he says, 憇o we stopped work immediately.?
慣hank you,?says Ruth. 慦e抣l excavate as quickly as we can.?She knows that the delay will be costly and inconvenient for the council.
慏o you think it抯 been here a long time??asks the foreman, whose name is Cezary. The yellowing skull is clearly visible in the earth, lying beside a broken pipe. The skull itself looks undamaged and Ruth feels an excavator抯 thrill.
慞robably,?said Ruth. 慣here was a medieval cemetery nearby.?
慖s that why it抯 called Tombland??asks Cezary.
慣ombland comes from a Danish word meaning empty space,?says Ruth. 慖 know that抯 disappointing.?
慞lenty of tombs here though,?says Ted. 慦e抳e found skeletons before, haven抰 we, Ruth??
慪es,?says Ruth. 慣he graveyard of St George抯 once covered this whole area. There are rumours that there抯 a plague pit here too, although nothing has ever been discovered.?
慞lague??says Cezary, rather nervously.
慣here were several outbreaks of the plague in Norwich in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. So many people died that there wasn抰 room in the graveyards,?says Ruth. 慖t抯 thought that the bodies were probably thrown into pits. Mass graves.?
慣he outcast dead,?says Ted. There抯 a service of this name every year, to remember the bodies buried in unmarked graves. Ruth always tries to attend, despite not believing in an afterlife.
Ted climbs into the trench and Ruth beckons her students nearer.
慔uman bones must always be treated with great care and respect,?she says, as Ted brushes away the soil from the skull. 慐very bone and fragment must be preserved. When I was excavating war graves in Bosnia, my mentor used to say that if you leave a bone uncharted, then you are an accessory to the crime.?
The students, who are only in their second term, look at each other nervously.
Ted only needs to work for a few more minutes before it becomes clear that an entire skeleton is present. Cezary goes to tell his workforce to go home for the day.
慡ee the way the body is laid out,?Ruth tells her students. 慣his suggests a formal burial. The corpse may have been shrouded. There may even have been a coffin.?
慦hat抯 happened to the coffin??says someone. It抯 an obvious question but Ruth is glad it抯 been asked.
慖t would have rotted away,?she says.
Erik, Ruth抯 mentor at university, used to say, 慦ood returns to earth, only bones and stone remain.?