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‘The café was closed on Mondays,’ says Freya.
Tony wonders whether this was known at the time of Emily’s disappearance but no one seems to have thought to check with the café, despite it being one of her favourite haunts. He asks, trying to be tactful, when the wall was built in the downstairs room.
‘I think it was in 2002,’ says Freya, ‘because that was the year I left home. Met a boy and moved to Norwich with him. Didn’t last, of course.’
‘In 2002?’ That was the year Emily disappeared. ‘Do you know when?’
‘I think it was at Christmas because the café was closed then. Dad did most of the work himself. He loved DIY.’
Emily went missing in March. The wall was built in December, nine months later. Where was her body before it was hidden behind the wall? Or was she even alive until then? All Tony knows is, if DIY-loving Peter Webster were alive, he’d be helping the police with their enquiries. Does Freya know that her answers are condemning her father? Does she care? Tony asks if Freya has any pictures of the Green Child café and, rather to his surprise, she produces a photograph from the child-sized table nearby.
‘Just one. We didn’t have camera phones then. I think Dad took this. He was keen on photography.’
Tony leans forward to look at the picture, then, remembering social distancing, leans back. Freya pushes the image towards him. It shows three people sitting at a table. A curly-haired girl is looking straight into the camera, a blond boy is looking at her and a man, instantly recognisable as a younger Cathbad, is laughing. A girl with her hair braided around her head is standing behind Cathbad, almost out of shot. In the background is a chimney breast in which an electric fire has been fitted. There is something chilling about seeing Emily in the very place where her body was to be concealed.
‘Is that you?’ says Tony, pointing to the figure in the background. She’s standing, he notes, like a waitress about to take an order.That’s what I was to Emily.
‘Yes,’ says Freya. ‘God knows why I used to have my hair like that.’
‘Did you know this man?’ He points at Cathbad.
‘Cathbad? Yes. He often came to the café, especially for the Friday sessions. He was good friends with Dad.’
‘Did he know Emily too?’
‘Yes. He was another one who was nuts about her.’
This is another line of enquiry altogether and a potentially embarrassing one. Tony likes and respects Judy, who has taught him a lot. It won’t be easy raising the subject of Cathbad’s feelings for murdered Emily. Tony hopes that he won’t be the one to do it. He asks if he can have a copy of the photograph and Freya says there’s a photocopier downstairs.
‘I found the picture in an old album,’ she says. ‘I haven’t looked at it for years.’
Somehow Tony doesn’t believe her.
Chapter 10
Ruth is rather surprised when her email is answered immediately.
Dear Ruth
This government’s attitude to the arts is positively barbaric. At this rate there will be no archaeology departments left and, if we can’t understand our past, how can we understand the future? I will certainly write a strong letter to your chancellor and sign petitions et al.
I definitely recall meeting you at St Jude’s. I seem to remember that you had a conversation with my wife, Alice, about childcare. How interesting that you participated in the dig at Grim’s Gaben in 2006. I’m afraid that my association with the place was at an end by then. It would be good to meet one day– perhaps in Cambridge?– and discuss tempora and mores.
With all good wishes
Leo
Ruth reads this twice. She nods approvingly at the first sentences but winces inwardly at ‘et al’. She wishes that she’d had a more intellectual conversation with Mrs Ballard– also an academic, she thinks– but she had been preoccupied with Kate changing schools after the move to Cambridge. She notes the archaic ‘Grim’s Gaben’ and the frankly ridiculous ‘o tempora, o mores’ reference. And why was Ballard’s ‘association’ with the flint mines at an end by 2006? Ruth forwards the email to Nelson, smiling inwardly at the thought of his reaction.
Sure enough, in a few minutes, Nelson is on the phone.
‘Pretentious idiot. What’s all that about tempura and moors?’
‘It’s a Latin phrase. “O tempora, o mores!” Means something like “Oh the times, oh the customs!”. I don’t know who said it. I didn’t do Latin at school.’
‘Still bloody pretentious.’
‘Agreed.’
