The Locked Room (Ruth Galloway #14)(28)

‘We’ll have a proper meeting in the open plan area,’ says Nelson. ‘I’ll even wear a mask.’



Cathbad and his children are doing yoga in the garden. Miranda, aged seven, spends most of her time trying to stand on her head. Michael, aged ten, takes it more seriously. He dislikes games at school but is actually well-coordinated with a good sense of balance. Maddie, Cathbad’s grown-up daughter, has unexpectedly joined them and she is like a poster for yogic prowess, standing on one leg in tree pose, her golden hair shining in the weak sun. The rescue hens, Darcy, Shirley and Motsi, watch her admiringly. The children chose the names although Cathbad still secretly thinks of the chicken sisters as Alecto, Tisiphone and Megaera, after the Eumenides, or Furies, the Greek goddesses of vengeance.

Cathbad has a pretty shrewd idea why Maddie has ­materialised this morning, but he says nothing until he has finished the session, raising his thumbs to his third eye and lowering them to his heart. Michael copies him. Miranda has wandered off to find Thing, who is excluded from yoga because he finds downward facing dog unbearably exciting. Maddie whispers a reverent ‘namaste’.

‘We’re going to start every day with yoga,’ Cathbad tells Maddie, as they walk back to the house. ‘I’m trying to make home-schooling a real adventure. We’ll tell a continuing story and illustrate it with things that we find on the beach or on our nature walks. The school have sent some work sheets but I don’t think we’ll bother with them. Michael and Miranda can learn science, history and geography from the world around them.’

‘I can help,’ says Maddie. ‘I’m good at telling stories.’

‘Have you come to stay then?’ says Cathbad, measuring coffee carefully into his Italian espresso machine. The children have already got out the flapjacks. Thing is hoovering up crumbs.

‘If that’s OK with you and Judy.’

‘You’ll have to ask Judy but I’m sure it will be. We’d love to have you.’ Cathbad feels an atavistic satisfaction at the thought of having all his children with him during lockdown. With the hens and the vegetable patch they’ll be almost self-sufficient. There’s no need for any of them to venture into the terrifying world of coronavirus. Except Judy, of course.

‘I think I’ll go mad if I stay at the flat with no outside space,’ says Maddie. ‘The lease is up next month and Jody’s going to move back home too.’ Maddie’s flatmate Jody is a nurse. Cathbad thinks that she’ll need all the creature comforts she can get in the weeks ahead.

‘I expect I’ll be furloughed,’ says Maddie. ‘But I can still do freelance work.’

‘What’s furloughed?’ says Cathbad. The word has a baleful agricultural sound, a cross between furrow and plough.

‘You keep your job, but on less pay,’ says Maddie. ‘I suppose it’s better than nothing. But it’ll leave me time to help with the home-schooling. We can start our own newspaper. The Cathbad Chronicle. The Norfolk News.’

‘The Weird Times,’ says Cathbad.

‘These are weird times, all right,’ says Maddie.



Nelson holds his meeting, in defiance of the new regulations. He does wear a mask though and is surprised how claustrophobic it makes him feel. You can breathe, he tells himself, it’s all in your mind. He remembers Ruth telling him about a panic attack she once had whilst swimming. ‘Suddenly I just forgot how to breathe.’ He realises now that he never asked what Ruth had been panicking about.

It’s a shock to see the team wearing masks too. Tony’s, like Nelson’s, is standard NHS issue but Tanya’s is a rather jaunty tartan affair. ‘Petra made it for me,’ she says. ‘Masks are going to be in short supply.’ Nelson has already had a memo about shortages of PPE. It makes him feel slightly guilty about planning to send masks to Ruth.

He tells the team that the investigation into the death of Avril Flowers is still a priority. ‘Just do as much on the phone as you can,’ says Nelson. ‘We’ll keep looking into the other suicides too. We can’t expect much back-up. Uniform might be required to help the emergency services.’ He doesn’t add that, according to Jo, one of the tasks that might fall to the police force is ‘burying the dead’.

‘What about civilian staff?’ asks Leah. ‘I’ve heard of people being furloughed.’

‘Some will be furloughed,’ says Nelson. ‘But you’re a key worker in my eyes.’

‘Who else would work the printer for you?’ says Leah.

Everyone laughs a lot at this, glad at the release of tension, but Nelson sees something else in his PA’s face, something that makes him feel a little worried. He identifies it later: relief.





Chapter 15


It’s still dark when Ruth wakes up. The green numbers on her alarm clock say 6.05 a.m. Ruth resolutely closes her eyes but she knows there’s something there, just on the edge of her consciousness, something waiting to pounce, zigzagging its way across her synapses. Ah, there it is. Pandemic. Lockdown. Virus. Death. Ruth sits bolt upright, reaching for the soothing tones of Radio 4. ‘Health Secretary Matt Hancock announces that a temporary hospital called NHS Nightingale will open in London to cope with the rising tide of coronavirus cases . . .’ Ruth switches off the radio. Her phone pings. ‘GOV.UK CORONAVIRUS ALERT,’ says the message, in stress-inducing capitals. ‘New rules are now in force. You must stay at home . . .’