The Lantern Men Read online

  The Lantern Men

  Also By

  Also by Elly Griffiths

  the dr ruth galloway mysteries

  The Crossing Places

  The Janus Stone

  The House at Sea’s End

  A Room Full of Bones

  Dying Fall

  The Outcast Dead

  The Ghost Fields

  The Woman in Blue

  The Chalk Pit

  The Dark Angel

  The Stone Circle

  The Lantern Men

  the brighton mysteries

  The Zig Zag Girl

  Smoke and Mirrors

  The Blood Card

  The Vanishing Box

  Now You See Them

  other works

  The Stranger Diaries

  for children

  A Girl Called Justice

  Title

  Copyright

  This ebook edition first published in 2020 by

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © 2020 Elly Griffiths

  The moral right of Elly Griffiths to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

  electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording,

  or any information storage and retrieval system, without

  permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78747 756 8

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses,

  organizations, places and events are either the product of the

  author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance

  to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales

  is entirely coincidental.

  Ebook by CC Book Production

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  Dedication

  For Sheila de Rosa

  Epigraph

  . . . a wand’ring Fire . . .

  Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends,

  Hovering and blazing with delusive Light,

  Misleads th’ amaz’d Night-wanderer from his way

  To Boggs and Mires, and oft through Pond or Poole

  There swallow’d up and lost . . .

  John Milton, Paradise Lost

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Acknowledgements

  Who’s Who

  Dr Ruth Galloway

  Harry Nelson

  Michelle Nelson

  Michael Malone (aka Cathbad)

  Shona Maclean

  David Clough

  Judy Johnson

  Phil Trent

  Prologue

  10 July 2007

  She has been walking for a long time. It’s funny but she hadn’t thought that there was so much space in England. The map, which she printed out in the library at school, seemed to show the youth hostel here, somewhere in this sea of green, but now that she’s walking, in her special shoes with her backpack on, there’s no sign of any buildings anywhere. Her phone is out of battery and she feels very alone. All she can do is keep walking.

  Youth Hostel near Cambridge. The words evoked images of honey-coloured buildings, women in long dresses and men in bow ties, those boats that you row standing up. Images that, in the grey concrete of her home town, seemed as exotic as if they had been beamed from a distant star. But now, as the rain starts, easily finding its way through her supposedly rainproof cagoule, she wonders if it was all, in fact, imaginary. Did the England she pictured ever really exist? Is this what summer here is like? There is something oppressive about the landscape: fields, ditches, fences, the occasional blasted-looking tree. It’s as if she has claustrophobia and agoraphobia at the same time; she feels as if she’s crawling over the surface of the earth and at the same time hemmed in on all sides, unable to escape.

  It’s getting dark now. Her parents were right. She should never have come interrailing on her own. She should have travelled with friends; even now they’d be drinking warm wine in a dormitory somewhere, laughing at the day’s adventures. But that’s just it. She wanted adventures, not just the same photographs to stick on the wall of whichever indifferent university she ended up gracing with her ­presence. But walking for miles across grey fields doesn’t seem ­especially adventurous, especially as her new walking shoes are pinching badly. She looks at her watch. Ten o’clock, just dark. Should she look for shelter somewhere? But the rain-washed landscape offers nothing, not even a hut or a generously branched tree. The rain falls as if its one aim is to make her miserable.

  She sees the light first. That’s the thing about this road, you can see for miles. A car – no, a van – travelling quite fast, moving in her direction. Should she hitch a lift? Her father begged her not to do this but the alternative seems to be sleeping in a ditch. Yet something stops her. There’s something about the vehicle – she can see it quite clearly now, dark blue with blacked-out windows – that seems rather frightening, as if it is intent on some nefarious night-time business. She stands back, pressing herself against the hedgerow, pulling her hood over her face.

  But the van is slowing. It stops beside her and a window is lowered.

  ‘My poor child,’ says a voice that seems to come straight from her Cambridge fantasies, ‘you’re quite drenched. Jump in.’

  Chapter 1

  18 May 2018

  The last of the light is fading as Ruth sits on the terrace looking out over the fens. Her laptop is open in front of her and she has just typed the words ‘The End’. A bit silly and melodramatic, she’ll delete them before she sends the manuscript to her editor, but for the moment she likes to look at the screen and feel the satisfaction of having one thing in her life that is completed, finished, accomplished. She leans back in her basket chair and feels the dying rays of the sun on her face. The weather has been wonderful all through this week-long writing retreat, amazing weather for May in England.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Crissy has made one of her noiseless entrances, crossing the deck with a tray holding something that looks very like a gin and tonic.

  ‘Finished!’
Ruth turns to grin at her.

  ‘Fantastic.’ Crissy puts the tray on the table. ‘You deserve this then.’

  She had thought that Crissy looked a little preoccupied earlier but now she is smiling at Ruth with such warmth that Ruth feels herself smiling back, almost grinning. So many things about this week have been surprising, thinks Ruth, as she takes a delicious, juniper-scented sip, but making a friend in such a short time is definitely one of the biggest surprises. Ruth has a few, carefully selected, friends: Alison from school, Caz and Roly from university, Shona from work, Judy and Cathbad from . . . well, Cathbad would say that they are gifts from the universe. And yet she has never felt such an immediate connection as she did with Crissy. They have nothing in common really. Crissy is slightly older than Ruth, she wasn’t even sure what a forensic archaeologist did until Ruth explained, and seems to have no interest in the haunted fenland landscape around her. As far as Ruth knows, Crissy has no partner and no children. But she is such a serene, kindly presence, drifting around in her flowing dresses, her greying blonde hair in a ponytail that reaches almost to her waist. It is Crissy who turns Grey Walls, the squat stone house in the middle of nowhere, into a real sanctuary, full of soft lights and delicious smells. Ruth has been able to finish her third book, about Neolithic stone circles, in record time and has been able, temporarily, to forget the other worries that dominate her life: her work at Cambridge, her relationships, her aging father. She has not forgotten Kate, her daughter, or Flint, her cat, but she hasn’t worried unduly about them either. This despite not being able to get a mobile phone signal unless she stands at the bottom of the garden.

  Crissy sees her looking at her phone. ‘Your husband rang,’ she says. ‘He’s on his way to collect you now.’

  The word gives Ruth a jolt. Should she say something? But Crissy is already drifting away. So Ruth sits on the terrace and drinks her gin until Frank’s car appears, visible for miles in the flat landscape.

  *

  DCI Harry Nelson is checking the news on his phone when DI Judy Johnson comes bursting into his office.

  ‘Guilty,’ she says. ‘On both charges.’

  Nelson leans back in his chair and shuts his eyes for a moment. ‘Thank Christ,’ he says.

  It was one of the worst moments in a police officer’s life: waiting for the verdict. Almost two years ago Nelson had arrested Ivor March, assembled a portfolio of evidence against him and handed the case over to the Crown Prosecution Service. Now, after several expensive weeks at the Old Bailey, justice has been served. March has been found guilty of the murder of two women and, with any luck, will spend the rest of his days behind bars.

  Judy, who was Nelson’s second-in-command on the case, looks almost as relieved as he is.

  ‘I was sure it would be guilty at first,’ she says. ‘I mean, there was so much evidence. All those forensics. But when he just started denying everything, he sounded so plausible. I really thought they might believe him.’

  ‘Oh, he’s plausible all right,’ says Nelson.

  He thinks of the moment when he read the charges to March. He’d wanted to do it himself, to see the look in March’s eyes, to say the words: ‘Ivor March, you are charged that you did murder two women, Jill Prendergast and Stacy Newman, contrary to common law.’ That last bit always seemed self-evident; it would be a pretty black day when murder wasn’t against the law. But March had just smiled and made a gesture, with palm outstretched, as if to say, ‘Over to you now.’ He’d been confident even then, Nelson realises, that he’d get off.

  ‘Phil Trent made a mess of the forensic archaeology,’ he says. ‘Ruth would have done it better.’

  ‘He was OK,’ says Judy. ‘Juries never like expert witnesses.’

  ‘He confused them with all that stuff about soil pH,’ says Nelson. ‘The point was that March killed the women and buried them in his girlfriend’s garden. His DNA was all over them and on the rope and on the plastic. There was hair from his cat, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I can’t believe the girlfriend is standing by him,’ says Judy.

  ‘There’s a certain sort of woman,’ says Nelson, ‘who’s attracted to a man like March. They think he’s an alpha male because he kills people.’

  ‘Be careful,’ says Judy. ‘You’re sounding like Madge.’

  Nelson grins. Madge Hudson, criminal profiler, is known to King’s Lynn CID as ‘Queen of the Bleeding Obvious’. Superintendent Jo Archer, Nelson’s boss, is a fan though and insisted that Madge be involved with the March case. Madge gave it as her perceived wisdom that March ‘liked inflicting pain’.

  ‘Have you told the super?’ asks Nelson.

  ‘No,’ says Judy. ‘I came straight to you.’

  Nelson grunts to hide his satisfaction. ‘You should tell her,’ he says. ‘You know how she likes to get a case ticked off her list.’

  Judy looks at him. They have worked together for a long time and sometimes they don’t need words.

  ‘Is it ticked off though?’ she says at last.

  ‘No,’ says Nelson. ‘No, it isn’t.’

  *

  Kate comes running across the deck to meet her. ‘We went shopping,’ she says. ‘We bought steak and oven chips and really smelly cheese. You can smell it in the car.’

  Ruth hugs her daughter. Kate is nine now, a restless sprite with long, dark hair. She has shot up in the last year and her head now only just fits under Ruth’s chin.

  ‘I love smelly cheese,’ she says.

  ‘That’s what Frank said. He bought wine too and chocolate brownies for me.’

  ‘Sounds like a successful shopping trip,’ says Crissy.

  ‘This is my daughter, Kate,’ says Ruth, trying not to sound too proud.

  ‘She looks like you,’ says Crissy.

  ‘I look like my dad,’ says Kate, which is true. Ruth has, rather to her surprise, confided in Crissy about Kate’s parentage. Crissy smiles at her now and waves at Frank, who is standing by the car. He has obviously held back to let Ruth have her moment with Kate. Ruth turns to Crissy. ‘Thank you so much. I had a wonderful time.’

  Crissy envelops her in a hug that smells of patchouli and lemongrass.

  ‘I’m so glad,’ she says. ‘Come back soon.’

  But Ruth doesn’t know when she’ll next be able to afford the luxury of a week on her own. The writing retreat had been Frank’s idea, put forward as a solution to the ever-present stress of Ruth’s looming deadline. ‘Take a week and just concentrate on writing,’ he said. ‘No students, no worrying about Kate and Flint. Or me,’ he had added as an afterthought, perhaps realising that, for Ruth, part of his charm lay in the fact that she never had to worry about him. Well, it had worked. Ruth had finished the book, tentatively entitled The Devil’s Circle, and she feels more relaxed than she has for a long time, ever since the move from Norfolk, in fact.

  John, the gardener and handyman, appears with Ruth’s suitcase. He’s another one who knows how to make a silent entrance, but he’s a gentle soul who has told Ruth some very interesting things about local folklore. Ruth thanks him and offers her hand to say goodbye. After some hesitation, John shakes it heartily.

  Frank comes forward and takes the case. Then he kisses Ruth. ‘Good stay?’

  ‘Great. I finished it.’

  ‘That’s fantastic, honey.’ He hugs her. It never ceases to please Ruth when Frank calls her ‘honey’. Goodness knows why because she usually hates those sort of endearments. Perhaps it’s because it sounds so American.

  Frank puts the bag in the boot (or trunk, as he calls it). Kate jumps into the back seat. Ruth thanks Crissy again and they are off, bowling along the road that is the highest thing for miles around. The fenlands glide past them, purple with loosestrife, secret pools gleaming in the twilight.

  ‘How’s Flint?’ Ruth asks Kate.

  ‘He’s fine. He slept on m
y bed all week.’

  Flint is the one who has taken the move to Cambridge hardest. At first Ruth was scared to let him out and he sat grumpily in the window of the townhouse, probably dreaming of his old life amongst the abundant wildlife of the Saltmarsh. Now he does go into the garden and has established himself as the alpha cat in the neighbourhood, but Ruth still imagines that he looks at her rather resentfully. And he never sleeps on Ruth’s bed now, probably because Frank is in it.

  It’s nine o’clock by the time they get home but it’s still not quite dark. Not long until June and the longest day, thinks Ruth. The summer solstice. As ever, the idea of a pagan festival makes her think of Cathbad. She must ring Cathbad and Judy soon. Frank carries Ruth’s case into the house. Ruth follows with her laptop, looking out for Flint. In the first-floor sitting room, Kate switches on the television. Ruth is about to protest but then she sees the face on the screen; a strong, almost belligerent, face, with greying dark hair. ‘DCI Harry Nelson, Norfolk Police Serious Crimes Unit,’ runs the caption.

  ‘Daddy!’ says Kate in delight.

  ‘There was overwhelming evidence against March and we’re relieved that he was found guilty,’ Nelson is saying, ‘but we would still like to question him about the disappearance of two other women.’

  Frank comes into the room. ‘The steak won’t take long,’ he says. ‘Shall I open the wine?’ Then he stops because both Ruth and Kate are ignoring him, staring at the man on the television.

  Chapter 2

  Nelson is gathering up his things, ready to leave, when Superintendent Jo Archer appears in the doorway.

  ‘Leaving already?’ she says.

  Nelson doesn’t rise. It’s six o’clock and Jo is always telling him not to do overtime. ‘That’s right,’ he says. ‘Half day off for good behaviour.’

  Jo laughs and comes to sit in his visitor’s chair. She persists in believing that they have the best of working relationships. ‘We wind each other up all the time,’ she said once, ‘like brother and sister.’ Well, Nelson has two sisters and this is something entirely different. Jo is his boss, for one thing; for another she sits on a balance ball to conduct interviews and once tried to make him attend a mindfulness seminar. Despite all this, she’s not a bad copper and he doesn’t altogether dislike her.