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Ruth waits.
‘I understand that you performed the excavation of Emily’s remains,’ says Leo.
It sounds very cold put like that, thinks Ruth, and ‘performed’ is surely the wrong verb. But she agrees that she was the lead archaeologist involved.
‘Emily was a remarkable girl,’ says Leo. ‘She had a very good mind but she was also intuitive, almost magically so. I’ve never had a pupil like her and I’ve taught many, many students.’
‘It must have been a great shock when she went missing,’ says Ruth.
‘Well, at first I just assumed that she’d gone off with a friend or a boyfriend,’ says Leo. ‘It was only as the weeks went by that I started to fear the worst.’
‘Did Emily have a boyfriend?’
‘I think she was romantically involved with Thomas Westbourne, another student on the course,’ says Leo. ‘But it wasn’t serious. Boy–girl stuff. There was Cathbad too.’
‘What do you mean?’
Leo now looks like he’s enjoying himself. ‘Cathbad definitely had a fling with Emily. I thought you and Cathbad were such friends. Hasn’t he told you about his dark past when he was the jolly postman seducing women on his daily rounds?’
Ruth looks at Leo stonily. She hates to hear him talking about Cathbad in this way but, even so, there’s a tiny bit of his narrative that rings true. Cathbadwasonce a postman and Ruth has noticed before that he’s very susceptible to pretty women. But Emily must have been at least fifteen years younger than Cathbad. A similar age to his daughter. No, she doesn’t believe it. Instead she asks about the other students on the course, Amber and Emad.
To her surprise– and consternation– Leo laughs aloud.
‘My spies were right! You are a detective, Ruth. Did DCI Nelson send you here to cross-examine me?’
Ruth is too taken aback to reply. Still smiling, Leo says, ‘I’ve got nothing to hide. Tell DCI Nelson that. And DS Fuller too. She was an interesting woman, I thought. But, since you have come all this way, and descended into the womb of the earth, I will say this. Look to the sister.’
‘Whose sister?’
‘I’ll leave you to work that one out yourself,’ says Leo. ‘Sisters are doing it for themselves.’ He laughs again, enjoying the joke.
Chapter 14
‘Emily was always clever,’ says Naomi Pickering. ‘Both the girls were. We didn’t push them, but they were just good at things. Not just schoolwork but sport– Emily played hockey for the county– and music. Both of them did grade eight on the piano.’
Tanya smiles politely. She doesn’t believe about the not pushing for one second. After all, who paid for all those piano lessons?
‘Where did they go to school?’ she asks.
‘King’s Ely,’ says Naomi. ‘Sophie loved it there. She even asked to board as a senior. But Emily didn’t like it so much so we moved her to the Minster in Lincoln. We always listened to the girls and did what was best for them.’
This is said rather defensively. Tanya is willing to bet that the Minster is also a private school. She thinks it’s interesting that achievement is still so important to Emily’s parents. But it’s good. Until Tanya asked a random question about A-level results, Gordon and Naomi had been reserved, almost defensive. But now Naomi, at least, is almost expansive, getting out a team photograph to show Tanya.
‘I played county hockey,’ Tanya can’t help saying. ‘The standard is very high. Did Emily play at university?’
Naomi’s face clouds. ‘She played a bit in the first year but then she got injured. Broke a bone in her ankle. She had to have a metal pin put in. After that, she gave up. Only thought about studying. And those archaeology trips. Suddenly nothing mattered except archaeology.’
‘We didn’t want Emily to do archaeology,’ says Gordon. ‘She had science A-levels. She could have studied medicine.’
Like Sophie, thinks Tanya. And you.
‘Tell us about Emily at Cambridge,’ says Tanya. ‘Was she happy there?’
‘She changed,’ says Gordon. ‘She changed as soon as she met him.’
‘She was happy,’ Naomi interrupts. Rather hastily, thinks Tanya. ‘She loved the college and she loved the work. It was just that. . . her world seemed to be becoming smaller when it should have been getting bigger. At school, she had lots of friends. At St Jude’s, she only really saw the other members of her tutorial group– Tom, Amber and Emad. And Ballard, of course.’
‘She was always talking about Ballard,’ says Gordon. ‘She had tutorials at his house, used to babysit his children. It wasn’t a healthy student–teacher relationship. I said that in court, and I’ll say it again. It was as if he hypnotised them all with his talk of gods and ghosts and underground kingdoms.’
