Read Online The Ghost Fields by Elly Griffiths - Free Book Online Page B

impatient. ‘I wondered if you’d look at some land for us,’ he says. ‘I want to know if it’s possible that a body was buried there.’
    â€˜Are we talking about the pilot? I heard about it on
Look East.’
    â€˜Yes,’ says Nelson. He gives Shona an irritated look. ‘I can’t really talk about it here. Can you meet me at Blackstock Hall tomorrow? Ten o’clock.’
    It’s typical of Nelson that he assumes that Ruth has nothingbetter to do but it so happens that Ruth is free at that time. ‘I may have to juggle things at work,’ she says, ‘but that should be OK.’
    â€˜Nelson,’ cuts in Shona, ‘are you going to have your DNA tested?’
    Nelson looks across at the trailer. ‘Is that what all this is about? No thanks.’
    â€˜What about you two?’ Shona directs her question to Clough and Tim, who have come over to join them. She explains about the DNA project.
    â€˜You should do it,’ says Clough to Tim. ‘You’re bound to be local. Just look at you.’
    â€˜We’re all from Africa originally,’ says Tim. ‘Isn’t that right, Ruth?’
    â€˜In essence, yes,’ says Ruth.
    â€˜Come on then,’ says Clough. ‘I’m pretty sure I’ll turn out to be a Viking warrior or something.’
    The two men follow Shona towards the signs saying ‘DNA Testing Here’. Ruth looks back at Nelson but he is on his phone, oblivious to everything. It has started to rain. Ruth puts up her hood and heads towards the trailer.

6
    Ruth has seen Blackstock Hall before. There’s an oil painting of it in King’s Lynn Library and it always features prominently on local postcards. But the painted and the photographic images have nothing on the reality: the grey towers rising up out of the mist, the fields merging into the sky, the eerie silence broken only by the geese calling plaintively from the marshes.
    Nelson is already there, leaning against his car. He always manages to make Ruth feel as if she’s late.
    Ruth parks her Renault next to him, on the grass verge by the gate. After yesterday’s rain the ground is waterlogged and boggy. She hopes that she’ll be able to get the car out again.
    â€˜What do you think?’ Nelson gestures towards the house.
    â€˜And I thought my place was isolated.’
    Nelson laughs. ‘That’s what Cloughie and I said.’
    Ruth is slightly disconcerted to think that she has been the subject of discussion between Nelson and Clough. She always wonders what Nelson’s colleagues think of her. Well,Judy’s a friend, but the others—Clough, Tim and Tanya—they’re a slightly unknown quantity. The one thing they have in common is a fierce loyalty to Nelson. Do they resent her role in his life? What
is
her role in his life?
    If Nelson is indulging in such soul-searching, it doesn’t show.
    â€˜We’re looking for signs that a body’s been buried and dug up fairly recently,’ he says. ‘What are we looking for apart from a bloody big hole?’
    â€˜A grave is a footprint of disturbance,’ says Ruth. ‘The soil will look different, even the colour of it. Sometimes there’s a dip because, in time, soil compacts over a decomposing body and falls into the gap when the rib cage collapses. Even the vegetation will grow differently.’
    â€˜Decaying bodies are good for the flowers, are they?’
    â€˜Decomposition fluids can be toxic to some plants,’ says Ruth. ‘But some plants, like nettles, flourish.’
    â€˜But we’re looking for a grave that has been disturbed.’
    â€˜We can still see the signs,’ says Ruth. ‘Places where the earth is looser, less compacted.’
    â€˜If we do find the original grave, ‘says Nelson, ‘will you be able to tell how long ago the body was dug up?’
    â€˜It’s hard to be sure,’ says Ruth.