The Locked Room (Ruth Galloway #14)(53)

‘Judy. I’m really sorry but I think I’ve got Covid.’





Chapter 27


Judy drives straight home. Maddie meets her at the door.

‘Dad’s in his bedroom. He thought he should isolate himself.’

Judy is halfway upstairs before she considers the significance of ‘Dad’.

She opens the door of their bedroom. ‘Cathbad?’

‘Don’t come in,’ says Cathbad. His voice sounds reassuringly the same but, just as Judy is starting to relax, he starts to cough, a horrible racking sound that seems to go on and on.

‘Shall I get you some water?’ says Judy. Cathbad doesn’t answer so she goes into the bathroom, pours a toothmug full of water and looks in the cabinet. Surely there’s some cough mixture here? Eventually she finds an old and sticky bottle. Best before Jan 2018. Can linctus go off? Judy is bad with illness. Cathbad, as the parent at home, is the one who has had to cope with coughs, colds, ear infections, Michael’s occasional bouts of asthma.

She slides the bottle onto the bedside table on her side, without coming closer to Cathbad who is hunched on the other side of the bed, breathing heavily.

‘Have you called the doctor?’ she says.

‘No,’ says Cathbad, ‘but I think it’s Covid. I’ve lost my sense of smell and I keep coughing.’

‘I’ll call them,’ says Judy.

Maddie, Michael and Miranda are all standing in the hall. Judy composes her face into reassuring lines.

‘I think he’s OK. Maybe it’s just a cold. I’m going to ring the doctor just to be on the safe side.’

The surgery has a separate number for ‘patients who think they have symptoms of Covid-19’. Judy speaks to a sympathetic-sounding nurse called Zoe.

‘It’s best to avoid hospital if you can,’ she says. ‘Tell him to take paracetamol and keep his fluids up. Ring again if you’re worried.’

Judy finds some paracetamol and takes them up to Cathbad with a large glass of orange juice.

‘Vitamin C,’ she says.

‘Thanks.’ Cathbad is lying down, which looks so strange in the middle of the day that Judy feels quite sick.

‘The nurse said to take paracetamol.’

‘I will.’

‘You’ll be OK.’ Judy stands awkwardly in the doorway. She wants Cathbad to tell her that everything will be all right, but he has his eyes shut and seems to be concentrating on breathing.

‘Knock on the floor if you need anything,’ she says.

‘You should keep away,’ says Cathbad. ‘Keep the children away.’

Cathbad always wants the children with him. It’s as if his body has been invaded which, in a way, Judy supposes, it has.



Nelson can’t quite believe it either. If anyone could sail through the Covid crisis, he would have put money on it being Cathbad. He has an irritatingly healthy lifestyle, for one thing. Plus, he’s probably protected by hordes of pagan gods and goddesses and all the saints of the Catholic church thrown in for good measure. Nelson thinks of his mother, who took a great fancy to Cathbad when they first met. Maureen is praying daily to St Carlo Borromeo, who was said to offer protection against the plague and so may well perform the same trick for Covid-19. He must ring his mother tonight.

Nelson sends everyone home early. Tanya is still checking CCTV for any sightings around Avril Flowers’ bungalow. Nelson also catches her looking on Rightmove a few times. Leah is reorganising the filing system. Nelson tells her that she can work from home, but she seems keen to stay. ‘I’ll go mad at home.’ But, by five o’clock, they are all on their way out of the building.

Nelson hardly recognises his house. Laura has been to the shops and has even bought flowers. There’s a delicious cooking smell emanating from the kitchen and Radio 1 is playing upstairs.

‘Hi, Laura,’ he shouts. ‘I’m home.’

Laura appears at the top of the stairs. ‘I’m just doing some marking and I’ll be right down.’

‘No rush,’ says Nelson. He wonders what Ruth is doing. Now that he knows their routine it’s easier to imagine her and Katie in the cottage. Ruth will be at her laptop and Katie will be building something from Lego or writing her story about a cat. He wishes that he could ring them but doesn’t want Laura to come in halfway through. Instead, he calls Judy.

‘How’s Cathbad?’

‘Not too good. He’s still coughing and I think he’s got a fever.’

‘Paracetamol,’ says Nelson, drawing on his scant medical knowledge. ‘And lots of water.’

‘He’s taking paracetamol,’ she says. ‘I hope he’ll feel better soon.’ There’s a quaver in her voice that Nelson has never heard before.

‘Of course he will,’ says Nelson, hearing his voice sounding falsely hearty. ‘He’s as tough as old boots.’

‘He is,’ says Judy, sounding more like herself. ‘It’s just . . . I’ve never known him to be ill. Everything feels wrong. The kids and I don’t know what to do with ourselves. And Thing’s going crazy.’

The dog was always slightly crazy, in Nelson’s opinion. The bull terrier does not have Bruno’s superior intelligence. The house still seems very strange without Bruno. Nelson keeps thinking he can hear his claws clicking along the wooden floors or his tail swishing things off the coffee table. Maybe he’s being haunted by Black Shuck, a spectral dog who crossed his path – in a non-corporeal sense – on another case. Cathbad would definitely say so.