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‘A twenty-year-old student called Emily Pickering. She was identified by dental records. She was from Lincoln but studying at Cambridge.’
‘Lincoln? I was there yesterday.’ It suddenly seems ominous that she was thinking about bricked-up bodies and Victorian prisons.
‘I know,’ says Nelson. ‘You were having fun with Zoe.’
‘Which college was Emily at?’ asks Ruth, ignoring this.
‘St Jude’s. Studying archaeology.’
This is definitely beyond a coincidence. An omen, Cathbad might say. The case no longer seems like light relief. Ruth thinks of the courts and archways of St Jude’s, of her panelled office filled with portraits of long-dead scholars. It was a beautiful place but, despite everything, she’s not sorry to be back amongst the plate glass and breeze blocks of UNN.
‘Emily studied with a man called Leo Ballard,’ says Nelson. ‘Do you know him?’
‘I know of him,’ says Ruth. ‘He’s a very well-known archaeologist. He’s retired now but I once met him at a college dinner.’
‘Not at a May Ball then?’
What’s Nelson getting at? ‘I’ve never been to a May Ball in my life, Nelson.’
‘Ballard used to take students to a place called Grime’s Graves. Have you heard of it?’
‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘It a Neolithic flint-mining complex. Really fascinating. I did a dig there about eighteen years ago.’ It’s partly where Flint got his name.
‘We think Emily went there just before she died. On some sort of field trip.’
‘With Leo Ballard?’
‘Yes. What’s he like?’
‘I didn’t speak to him for long but I got the impression that he was a very charismatic teacher.’
‘Charismatic?’ Nelson says the word like he distrusts it. Ruth doesn’t altogether blame him. She once had a charismatic tutor, Professor Erik Andersen, and that association eventually proved to be a deadly one.
‘He had this way of staring at you,’ says Ruth. ‘Like he really wanted to hear what you had to say.’
‘Emily’s parents suspected him of being involved in her murder,’ says Nelson. ‘He eventually sued them. Not a very classy move.’
‘No,’ says Ruth. She tries to remember Leo Ballard, a rather emaciated figure in his college gown, with wild curly hair like a dandelion clock. He’d seemed urbane and charming, slightly amused, not like a man with murder on his conscience.
‘He was interviewed at the time,’ says Nelson, ‘and we’re interviewing him again tomorrow. I just wondered whether you had any inside information. I don’t suppose you could get in contact with him again, out of the blue?’
‘Funnily enough,’ says Ruth. ‘I can think of an excuse.’
Chapter 9
Tanya finds Cambridge annoying. Loughborough University might not be far away geographically but, in Tanya’s opinion, it’s light years away in terms of wearing normal clothes and not having silly names for things. And the bikes! Tanya is a keen cyclist but she wears a helmet and obeys traffic rules. Several times during the drive through the city DC Bradley Linwood has to take evasive action when some long-haired millennial swerves in front of them, balancing a latte in one hand. According to Tanya’s calculations, term is almost over (they’re even called something different in Cambridge), but there still seem to be plenty of students around. And the tourists are almost worse. People still aren’t going abroad and it seems to Tanya that every retired couple is in Cambridge that morning, taking selfies of themselves in front of the colleges.
‘Out of the way, Grandpa,’ she mutters, as an elderly man steps in front of the car to get a better view of the Mathematical Bridge.
‘Stay at home and save lives,’ says Bradley. They are on the same wavelength, which is why Tanya requested him as her partner.
Leo Ballard lives in Madingley, on the outskirts of Cambridge. It’s a relief to be out of the town centre but it’s an oddly desolate spot, a long straight road with three houses on one side and a military cemetery on the other. A large building glimmers in the distance but Tanya doesn’t know if it’s a stately home or another bloody college.
Leo Ballard is tall and thin with a mop of grey hair. He’s dressed like a tramp in a crusty-looking jumper and threadbare cords but he greets them in the confident upper-class tones of a baron welcoming serfs to his fireside. He ushers them into his study, a room so full of books that it actually makes Tanya feel sick. There are bookcases on every wall, titles in no apparent order, spines vertical and horizontal, some upside down. There are books on the desk, table and sofa and in a tottering tower by the door.
‘It’s a bit of a mess, I’m afraid,’ says Leo, not sounding even slightly apologetic. ‘I don’t let my wife or the cleaner tidy in here.’
Let my wife. Tanya doesn’t like the word ‘wife’, despite having one and being one herself, but it’s a long time since she’s heard such a sexist sentence. It has clearly never occurred to Professor Ballard to clean up himself instead of issuing orders. He’s now smiling, showing a wide gap between his front teeth. Tanya thinks Leo must be at least sixty, maybe even seventy, but he obviously still thinks he’s charming.
