The Locked Room (Ruth Galloway #14)(56)

That makes one of us, thinks Nelson.



Ruth is also shocked by the news about Cathbad. Judy sends her a text, which is closely followed by a call from Nelson.

‘I can’t imagine Cathbad getting ill,’ says Ruth.

‘No,’ says Nelson. ‘I think it’s thrown us all. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.’

‘Thanks,’ says Ruth. ‘How’s Laura?’

‘She’s fine,’ says Nelson. ‘I expect she just needed a rest.’

Ruth is too proud to ask ‘When will I see you again?’ so she says, rather heartily, that she hopes Laura continues to feel better and she rings off. Kate is watching her.

‘Is that Dad? How’s Laura? Is she coming to see us?’

‘I don’t suppose she can. Because of lockdown.’ Although that didn’t stop her running home to Daddy, thinks Ruth. ‘I heard from Judy earlier,’ she says. ‘Cathbad isn’t very well.’

‘Is it Covid?’ says Kate, sounding disconcertingly like a much older person.

‘Yes. They think so.’

‘Tasha’s mum had Covid but she’s better now.’

‘Most people do get better very quickly,’ says Ruth. The words but some people don’t hover unsaid. But they don’t need to be said when every news bulletin is full of hospital wards crammed with the sick and dying. Is Cathbad in intensive care? Attached to tubes and drips? Ruth wishes she could ask Zoe about his possible treatment, but she saw her leaving for work earlier, wearing her blue scrubs and waving cheerfully. Ruth had waved back, channelling Mrs Grantham.

After a morning of pretending to work, Ruth and Kate go for a walk across the marshes. Ruth thinks of the first time she saw Cathbad. The archaeologists had planned to remove the henge timbers to the museum. The wood needed to be treated so that it could be preserved. But, when they arrived at the site that morning, it was to find a group of cloaked figures forming a protective ring around the original circle. The leader had been a youngish man with long black hair and a piratical beard.

‘They belong here,’ he had said. ‘Between the earth and the sky. Part of the cycle of nature, part of the ebb and flow of the tides.’

Those, she thinks, were the first words she heard Cathbad say. Erik had been impressed with him, had stayed to argue his case, but Cathbad and his druid friends had refused to move. Finally, at sunset, and against Erik’s wishes, the protestors were removed by the police. Ruth didn’t speak to Cathbad then – they only became friends years afterwards – but he had, it transpired later, noticed her.

‘Let’s go back,’ says Kate. ‘It’s boring and cold.’ It’s true that it’s a grey day with a sharp wind. They haven’t got near to the beach or the henge circle but Ruth agrees to turn back. ‘Hecate knows her own mind,’ Cathbad always says. ‘But you don’t seem to know her name,’ Ruth sometimes answers. She can’t, now, imagine a life without Cathbad.

Back home, they eat cheese sandwiches for lunch. Ruth will need to go food shopping again soon. Kate settles in front of the television but Ruth has a lecture at two so she props her laptop at a flattering angle and starts to upload her presentation. An email pops onto the screen, silhouetted against Avebury Ring.

I think I’ve found something. Can you come to Tombland?



Judy has never known a day like it. She has never realised before how much the house belongs to Cathbad. He’s in every inch of it. His cloak over the banisters. His jams and preserves in the pantry. His bug hotel and hedgehog house in the garden. The hens squawking for him. Thing howling for him.

Maddie is a tower of strength and takes the children for a walk, before engaging them in several games of Mario Kart. Judy has to admit that the neighbours have also been very kind. Steve and Richard (‘Whatsit’ to Judy no longer) have baked a cake and passed it over the fence. Jill, on the other side, posted a card through the letter box. It showed a teddy bear looking out of a window and said, ‘We’re here if you need us. If you don’t, we’re still here.’ She included her mobile number but not her husband’s name, so Judy is still not sure if it’s Fred or Ned. Did Jill buy the card specially? Where? All the specialist stationery shops are shut. Or does she have a stock of such things, a neat phrase for every occasion? This message strikes Judy as rather touchingly obvious. Neighbours are just there, you don’t choose them like friends, they are simply the people who live nearby. But, today, their presence is definitely comforting.

Now it’s afternoon and Maddie and the children are watching The Lord of the Rings. ‘We’ll watch all the films,’ Maddie tells them, ‘it’ll take ages.’ It’s all a bit much for Judy; Frodo wondering why it’s his fate to live through such times, Gandalf telling him to shut up and get on with it (or words to that effect). Cathbad loves Tolkien and once had a cat called Hobbit. Judy leaves the children in Middle Earth and retreats to her bedroom to ring the hospital. There’s no answer on the number she was given by the paramedics but she goes through the switchboard and, eventually, after shamelessly using her police rank, she gets through to a nurse who tells her that Cathbad has been moved to Intensive Care.

‘It’s not necessarily anything to worry about,’ says the kindly voice at the end of the phone. ‘It just means that they can look after him properly.’