The Locked Room (Ruth Galloway #14)(64)

So, on the face of it, Zoe is innocent, a victim of a miscarriage of justice. All the same, Nelson still feels uneasy about her living next door to Ruth and Katie. And he’d very much like her to turn up.

‘Boss?’

Nelson looks up to see Tanya in the doorway, the lower half of her face covered by one of her colourful masks.

‘I may have found something.’

‘Yes?’

Tanya comes closer but not too close. ‘I spoke to Samantha Wilson’s adult children again. Just to see if anything had come to them since their mother’s death. The son, Brady, mentioned that a neighbour had seen a man going into the house a few times. A bearded chap, she said.’

A bearded chap. Nelson recalls the picture on Joe ­McMahon’s student card, the intense stare, the full black beard.

‘Did you talk to this neighbour?’

‘That’s the frustrating thing. She moved away, Brady says, as soon as lockdown started. She was going to stay with her grown-up son, but Brady doesn’t know where he lives.’

‘See if you can find her.’

‘I will.’

Tanya seems to be expecting something but it’s a few seconds before Nelson realises what it is.

‘Good work,’ he says.



Ruth finds it very hard to concentrate on her tutorials. These are final year students so her main job is to ensure that they finish their dissertations and to reassure them that, one day, they will have a graduation ceremony. She sympathises. It’s hard writing a dissertation at the best of times but, when you can’t get to a library and you’re stuck at home in your childhood bedroom with no support from lecturers or fellow students, the task must seem monumental. Ruth gives all the help she can, whilst glancing at her phone to see if she’s had a text from Judy.

When she’s pressed ‘leave meeting’ for the last time, she thinks about Eileen Gribbon. She didn’t appear for Ruth’s last lecture. Is Eileen still in the empty halls of residence or has she gone back to the home where she doesn’t feel welcome? She texts Fiona, who is Eileen’s personal tutor.

‘I was just about to message,’ texts Fiona. ‘Eileen hasn’t turned up to the last two tutorials. I’m a bit worried.’

Me too, thinks Ruth. She texts David and asks if he’s seen anything of Joe McMahon.

‘No,’ replies David, with what seems like breezy unconcern. ‘I think he’s dropped out.’

‘Contact him,’ Ruth texts back. ‘ASAP.’ She doesn’t add ‘please’. That’ll teach him, she thinks. The truth is that David probably won’t even notice.

Her phone pings. Nelson. Cathbad in ICU. Tubes. Doesn’t sound good. Ruth’s heart sinks. She texts a quick Thinking of you xxx to Judy. What can she do to take her mind off her magical friend reduced to a body on an intensive care bed? Kate is absorbed in her cat saga, watched intently by Flint. Ruth goes to the window. Still no sign of Zoe although Ruth thinks that she hears faint meowing from Derek. Ruth gets out the yellow file marked ‘House’. There are the photographs, the dray, the copy of the title deeds and the printout of the newspaper article.



Big-hearted Foster Mum Dies

Tributes have been paid to Dot Barton, of 2 New Road, Saltmarsh, who died of cancer at the age of 68. As well as being mother to two sons, John and Matthew, and grandmother of three, Dot also fostered more than a hundred children. ‘Our door was always open,’ says Dot’s husband, Alf (70). ‘Dot was so kind,’ says Alma McLaughlin (21), who was fostered as a teenager. ‘She really made a difference to my life.’ Dot’s funeral will be held at St Peter’s Church, Gaywood, on Wednesday 17th June.



Ruth googles Alma McLaughlin and, at almost her first try, finds her on Facebook. She’s the right age, early seventies, based in Cornwall and, by the looks of it, living an active paddle-boarding, scuba-diving existence. Ruth messages Alma and, a few minutes later, gets a reply. That’s one of the only good things about lockdown. People are glued to their computers and have little else to do besides replying to random strangers. Yes, says Alma, she was fostered by Dot for a year in 1964 when she was fifteen. Her home life hadn’t been easy but Dot – and Alf – had made all the difference. She has very happy memories of the cottage.

‘I know this is going to sound strange,’ types Ruth, ‘but does the name Dawn Stainton mean anything to you?’

The answer comes back almost immediately. ‘Yes! She was Dot’s foster child too. But she was only a baby then. About a year old. She was living with Dot until she got a permanent adoption. Sweet little thing.’

‘Do you know anything about Dawn’s birth parents?’ asks Ruth, typing so quickly that she almost misses out the apostrophe. She doesn’t though; some things are still sacred.

‘I think I overheard once that her mother was young and unmarried. The usual thing. You didn’t keep your baby if you were an unmarried mother in the sixties. Makes you feel sad, doesn’t it?’

It certainly does, thinks Ruth.





Chapter 33


She crawls to the door. ‘Let me out,’ she says.

His voice is soft, almost kind. ‘There’s no way out.’

A plate is pushed through the grille. She reaches up to take it. Another two biscuits and half an apple.