The Locked Room (Ruth Galloway #14)(41)

‘Well, if you can think of anyone, can you give me a ring on this number?’ says Judy.

‘Of course,’ says Jacquie. ‘Can I ask though . . . I thought Sam . . . took her own life. Is there more to it than that?’

‘I’m just following up on a few loose ends,’ says Judy. ‘But suicide is still the most likely cause of death.’

‘Did Karen commit suicide too?’

‘Yes, she did,’ says Judy. This was what was on the death certificate after all.



After yoga, Ruth gives a lecture on decomposition and then settles down to do some marking. With end-of-year exams cancelled, the third years will have to do an extra piece of coursework, which means yet more work for the teachers. In their last departmental Zoom, David said the students were lucky to miss finals, but Ruth feels sorry for them. They may have avoided the horror of a written exam, but they’ll miss the joy afterwards. She remembers sitting with her friends Roly and Caz in Gordon Square after their last exam at UCL. They had drunk red wine from the bottle and gazed up at the dusty plane trees. Anything seemed possible then. Ruth’s students won’t have this moment and, the way things are going, they might not even have a graduation ceremony.

Kate is making Hogwarts out of Lego. She got the set last Christmas, made it on Boxing Day and destroyed it by Twelfth Night. Ruth doesn’t know why the wizarding school has appeared again, but she’s pleased that Kate is happily occupied. Besides, she tells herself, slightly defensive even in her inner monologue, it’s based on a book so it must be educational.

Ruth is scrolling through another second-year essay on lithic technology when an email pops up on her screen.

Can I talk to you? Eileen.

Ruth hesitates. Eileen isn’t one of her personal tutees and this sounds like rather a personal request. Should she direct the girl to her counsellor? But she remembers Eileen coming to see her and her interest in Martha, the Tombland skeleton. Maybe this is just another question about isotope analysis.

OK, when?

The answer comes back almost as soon as Ruth’s fingers leave the keyboard.

Can we zoom now?

Intrigued now, Ruth sends a link and, in a few minutes, Eileen’s face appears on her screen. Ruth’s first thought is that the girl looks ill. Ruth remembers seeing Eileen waiting outside her office at UNN and being struck by her long dark hair (rather like Kate’s) and by her general air of health and well-being. Now the hair is pulled back into a greasy ponytail and Eileen’s skin looks both grey and blotchy. Perhaps it’s just a bad Zoom angle. Ruth has abandoned hope of looking good on screen and, most of the time, manages not to look at herself. The second thing she notices is the brick wall behind Eileen’s head and the institutional-looking noticeboard.

‘Are you in halls?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ says Eileen. ‘They’re still open for international students and for people who haven’t got anywhere to go.’

Eileen clearly falls into the second category. Was this why she kept her camera off during the last Zoom lecture, because she was embarrassed about not going home?

‘What’s it like?’ she asks. ‘Are you able to get food?’

‘I go to the shops,’ says Eileen. ‘There’s a mini supermarket quite near and I don’t eat much anyway.’

Alarm bells are now going off in Ruth’s head.

‘Is there anyone else you can stay with? Family or friends?’

‘Not really,’ says Eileen. ‘My dad’s dead and I don’t really get on with my mum. I mean, she’s OK, I just don’t feel welcome in her house.’

This was the dad who watched Time Team, Ruth remembers. She feels the chill of ‘her house’. Despite all Ruth’s disagreements with her parents, the house in Eltham has always felt like her home.

‘Is there anyone else in halls?’ she asks.

‘A few overseas students,’ says Eileen, ‘and Joe. Joe McMahon from my course. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I’m worried about him.’

And I’m worried about you, thinks Ruth.

‘Why?’ she asks.

‘He’s not answering his phone. His blinds are drawn and there’s no answer when I knock on his door. I’m worried he might have . . . done something to himself. His mum committed suicide. He told me about it.’

‘I’m going to get on to the police,’ says Ruth.



Nelson has never visited the halls of residence at UNN but, as he drives through the maze of buildings, he’s reminded of similar places in Brighton and Plymouth, where his daughters were students. There are the same apartment blocks, bookshops and cafés with tiny roads between them, like a child’s version of a town. The only difference is that, when he was dropping off Laura and Rebecca, the miniature streets were full of students and their parents, carrying luggage and saying tearful goodbyes. There had been balloons at Brighton and ‘student welcomers’ at Plymouth. Presumably, there were similar festivities at UNN, when term started last September but, today, the campus is deserted. Cherry tree blossom blows across the courtyards, looking like confetti from a long-forgotten wedding. The shops are boarded up and, across the bolted door of Canary Café, someone has written, ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here’.

On the phone, Eileen told him to go to ‘Vancouver’, as if its location was obvious. But, in the event, Nelson finds it easily. It’s the largest building, almost as big as a small hotel and with the same anonymous feeling to it, stone cladding with a vertical line of plasticky-looking blue tiles, rows of windows all with the same dreary blinds. There’s a girl standing under the blue porch. She’s wearing a mask but Nelson can tell that she’s anxious just from the way that she’s standing, arms wrapped around her body. She’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, too flimsy for the breezy spring day.