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‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t think it was relevant. You were asking about me.’
Something in the way she says it makes Tony think that Freya is used to being overlooked in favour of Gaia.
‘It’s tough being the youngest,’ he says. ‘My parents are always going on about Mike, my brother. He’s the clever one.’
He can almost hear Freya relaxing. ‘Tell me about it. All my parents ever talked about what how clever Gaia was. How she got a scholarship to Cambridge. How her tutor thought she wassoclever. . .’ Her voice peters out.
‘Was that tutor Leo Ballard?’
A longer pause. ‘Yes.’
‘No wonder you said you were sick of hearing his name.’
‘Gaia never stopped talking about him,’ says Freya. ‘All his weird views on women and sacrifices and sacred rituals. He sounded like a nutter to me.’
‘Did you ever meet him?’
‘Once. At Gaia’s graduation. I couldn’t think what she saw in him. He looked like a scarecrow.’
‘Did your dad know Leo Ballard?’
At the mention of her father, Freya’s voice tightens again. ‘I think he just met him that one time.’
‘And your mum?’
‘She didn’t like him. She told me so.’
It’s a pity, thinks Tony, that Mrs Webster is no longer able to tell anyone anything.
The priest, Father Tony, flicks a switch and a square in the wall is illuminated. Bradley goes closer. There’s a glass box within the space, like a large test tube topped by a crown. Within it is a mummified hand.
‘Is that it?’ says Bradley.
‘That’s it,’ says Father Tony. ‘St Etheldreda was a Saxon queen and the founder of a monastery. Her shrine at the cathedral used to be a major pilgrimage site.’
‘So why isn’t the hand there now?’
‘The Reformation,’ says the priest. He doesn’t offer any more information and Bradley doesn’t like to ask. He dropped history for PE in Year 9. ‘A good choice,’ Tanya once told him.
‘Her hand was found in a recusant house in 1811,’ says Father Tony. ‘People who continued to be Catholic when it was against the law,’ he explains, seeing Bradley’s blank face. ‘Norfolk, and East Anglia generally, was very loyal to Catholicism.’
This is news to Bradley.
‘Anyway, the hand was brought here. So there’s a good chance that it really was hers.’
‘Do many visitors come to see it?’ asks Bradley. It seems an odd way to spend time but people are strange. Any police officer knows that.
‘A few,’ says Father Tony. ‘But its existence is not that widely known.’
‘What about this man?’ Bradley produces a picture of Cathbad. ‘Have you seen him?’
It’s a fairly normal snap, no cloak or druid stuff. Not very recognisable really. But, to Bradley’s surprise, the priest smiles. ‘Cathbad? Yes. I know him well. He often pops in to say hallo to St Etheldreda.’
To bits of her, anyway.
‘Have you seen him recently? In the last few days?’
