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‘Did you?’ says Jeanne. ‘I know that’s his area of interest, though, of course, he’s retired now.’
Ruth abandons subterfuge. The case will be all over the papers soon anyway.
‘Have you heard about the Emily Pickering case?’
‘The girl who disappeared? That was before my time but I’ve heard about it. They never found her, did they?’
‘They’ve found her now,’ says Ruth. ‘It’s confidential at the moment but I excavated what police think are Emily’s remains. They’re reopening the case. I know Leo was interviewed the first time. He was her tutor.’
‘As I say,’ Jeanne repeats, ‘it was before my time but I’ve heard rumours about Leo.’
‘What sort of rumours?’
‘Affairs with his students. Sadly not uncommon twenty years ago. I like to think things are better now.’
‘So do I,’ says Ruth. She wouldn’t bet on it, though. ‘Is that why Leo left the college?’ she asks.
‘I think so. He had tenure but I think they leant on him to leave. You really need to ask someone from Jude’s. You taught there, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but I don’t want to get too involved. The police will investigate. I just wanted to ask you. . . what you thought of him, I suppose.’
‘I’ll just say this,’ says Jeanne, her accent sounding very clipped. ‘When I heard the rumours, I believed them.’
‘Thank you,’ says Ruth. ‘That’s very interesting.’
‘Shall we join the others in the pub?’ says Jeanne. ‘Is it the White Hart?’
‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘Do you know the way? I’ll join you in a minute.’
When the door shuts behind Jeanne, Ruth clicks on the email headed, ‘Test results on Red Mount Street bones.’
She reads quickly. ‘. . . pathological lesions. . . anterior. . . posterior. . . arachnoid depression. . . preservation. . . radial head. . .’ until she gets to the end, ‘forensic analysis of the fabric fragments shows the presence of animal hair and a substantial amount of chalk dust.’
Ruth thinks of returning from Grime’s Graves yesterday and Prisha telling her, ‘You’ve got white stuff on your trousers.’
Mark Oldbury has asked Bradley to meet him in the museum.
‘It’s near the university and there’s an office I can use there.’
Bradley isn’t a fan of museums although he remembers being taken to London as a child and seeing a dinosaur skeleton that had impressed him. He’s pleased to see a Tyrannosaurus Rex suspended from the ceiling at Manchester Museum.
‘It’s a reproduction,’ Mark tells him. ‘We call him Stan after the man who discovered him. It was in America. South Dakota, I think.’
An American dinosaur, thinks Bradley. Even cooler. Mark has a slight accent but Bradley can’t place it. He asks and Mark says he’s ‘an Aussie’. ‘I went to Cambridge on a scholarship and never went back.’
Mark’s ‘office’ is really just a cupboard next to the archaeology collection. There’s no window and only enough room for a table and two chairs. Mark leaves the door slightly open, propped ajar by what looks like a mummified cat. Bradley doesn’t raise any objection because he doesn’t want to suffocate. Besides, the museum is almost deserted.
‘As you know,’ says Bradley. ‘I wanted to talk to you about Emily Pickering. As I said on the phone, we’ve found what appear to be her remains.’
‘Poor Emily,’ says Mark. ‘Poor little girl.’ He’s nearly fifty (Bradley checked the files) but still looks boyish, below average height and slim with light, almost colourless, hair. His eyes are very pale blue and he doesn’t blink much. Bradley finds him slightly creepy and ‘little girl’ doesn’t help.
‘Can you tell us about the last time you saw Emily?’ he says. ‘We’re asking everyone,’ he adds, as Mark is looking rather panicky. There’s sweat on his upper lip but, then, it is rather humid in the cupboard.
‘It was at the end of the Grime’s Graves dig,’ says Mark. ‘Such a magical time. On the last night we had a barbecue and sat round a camp fire. Cathbad had a thing about fires.’
‘How was the mood in the camp?’ asks Bradley.
‘Happy. We’d had a few good days. You know these pampered kids; they’re not used to roughing it. There are always complaints at first. The ground’s too hard, there’s no hot water and they have to pee behind a bush. They don’t come prepared at all. One girl even brought her curling tongs. But, by the end of the weekend, they’d all settled down. There was a celebratory feeling that last night. One of the students played the guitar. We were all singing. There was one strange thing, though.’
