DYING FALL

ELLY GRIFFITHS

DYING FALL

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by

Quercus

55 Baker Street

7th Floor, South Block

London

W1U 8EW

Copyright © 2013 by Elly Griffiths

The moral right of Elly Griffiths to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library

HB ISBN 978 0 85738 886 5

TPB ISBN 978 0 85738 887 2

EBOOK ISBN 978 0 85738 888 9

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

You can find this and many other great books at:

www.quercusbooks.co.uk

Also by Elly Griffiths

The Crossing Places

The Janus Stone

The House at Sea’s End

A Room Full of Bones

For John Maxted

and for Sarah and Michael Whitehead

‘That strain again! It had a dying fall:

O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound

That breathes upon a bank of violets

Stealing and giving odour! Enough, no more;

Tis not so sweet now as it was before …’

Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

PROLOGUE

At first he isn’t even scared. Even though his room is full of smoke, and when he reaches the top of the stairs the heat makes him stagger backwards, eyes stinging. It’s only a fire and he knows what to do in a fire, he learnt it at Cubs some thirty years ago. Besides, he’s in a tiny two-storey house, not the Towering Inferno (a film that he must have watched at about the same time, come to think of it). He knows the bedroom window doesn’t open and the bathroom window’s too small but the front door is only a few steps away, just down those stairs. How hard can it be? Still calm, he goes back into the bathroom and soaks a towel, just like Akela told him. He wraps the towel round his face and starts to descend the stairs. It is hard, far harder than he thought possible. In the past he has read about people in fires being ‘beaten back by the heat’ and, deep down, he had always thought, ‘Wimps. It’s just hot air. Push through it.’ But this doesn’t seem like air any more, it’s solid, and he has to batter against it with his whole body. After three steps he is exhausted and the heat is just getting stronger. He can’t see much because of the towel, but he can hear the fire – a sort of dull rushing sound filling the whole of the downstairs. He can smell it too; it smells industrial and serious.

But he can hear something else. Sirens. Someone must have called the fire brigade. Hallelujah. He’s saved. He falls the last few steps, right onto the front door. The handle is so hot that it sticks to his hand but he holds on and turns with all his might, pushing against the door with his shoulders. The towel slips and suddenly he’s choking. The hall is full of dense black smoke and he’s gasping for breath. With his last atom of strength he hurls himself against the door. Only then does he realise that it’s locked. From the outside.

And now he’s scared.

CHAPTER 1

The phone is ringing when Ruth opens the front door. She pauses on the threshold, wondering whether she should just let it ring. Her friends all have her mobile number. The landline can only mean her mother or someone trying to sell her double glazing, and even though the windows of her cottage rattle in the wind she likes it that way, thank you very much. Her mother will only be ringing to torment her (‘I saw Janice’s daughter the other day, she’s a GP, ever so slim and attractive, and she’s got three children and they all play the violin. How’s the diet going?’). She decides to ignore it but Kate, her eighteen-month-old daughter, runs past her yelling ‘Ring! Ring!’ Kate picks up the phone and says clearly, ‘Piss.’ Cursing Cathbad, Kate’s Druid godfather, who has taught her the all-purpose salutation, ‘Peace’, Ruth snatches the phone away.

‘Hello?’

‘Ruth?’ It’s a woman and she’s laughing. ‘Did someone just say “piss”?’

‘That was Kate.’ Ruth is rifling through her mental list of acquaintances. Who can this be? Someone from the university? A chatty window saleswoman? But she sounds familiar …

‘Ruth,’ says the voice, ‘it’s Caz. Carol.’

Carol. One of Ruth’s best friends from her university days. A fellow archaeology student, ex-flatmate, loyal drinking companion and repository of secrets. With a rush of guilt, Ruth realises that when she transferred her contacts onto her new phone last year she must have forgotten Caz. They haven’t spoken for almost three years.

‘I tried you on your mobile,’ Caz is saying, ‘but there was no answer.’

As Ruth’s old mobile is currently reposing at the bottom of the sea, or washed up like flotsam on some North Norfolk beach, this is hardly surprising.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Ruth. ‘I’ve got a new one. I’ve been a bit crap about updating it.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ says Caz. ‘It’s great to hear your voice.’

‘Great to hear you too.’ Ruth feels a rush of affection for Caz, cool spiky-haired Caz, expert exponent of drinking games, fan of explosive cocktails and dry-stone walls, anarchist and fearless beret-wearer. She’s an accountant now.

‘I’m really sorry, Ruth,’ Caz is saying, and all the laughter has gone from her voice. ‘But I’m ringing with bad news.’

‘Oh God.’ Again Ruth rifles through her list of friends. Is anyone dead, sick? She has just reached the age when her friends start to seem mortal. She watches as Kate staggers into the room carrying Ruth’s cat, Flint. ‘Ahh! My Flinty.’

‘Put him down, Kate.’ Flint is giving her martyred looks over Kate’s shoulder.

‘What?’ says Caz.

‘Sorry. Just talking to Kate.’

‘Oh, I forgot you had a child. How old is she now?’

‘Nearly two.’ She feels stupid saying eighteen months and thinks that Caz, who has three children of her own, doesn’t sound particularly interested.

‘Cute,’ says Caz briefly. ‘The news. It’s Dan. Dan Golding.’

‘Dan? Dan the Man?’

Dan Golding. Dan the man. The coolest archaeologist ever. The Indiana Jones of UCL. Ruth hasn’t heard from him for years but she has always imagined that he’s doing impossibly exciting things, finding the Lost Ark of the Covenant, starring in a Hollywood film, marrying Angelina Jolie.

‘What’s happened to him?’ she asks.

‘He’s dead,’ says Caz. ‘I read it in the paper. He was working at Pendle University and he died in a fire.’

‘Jesus.’ In all her imaginings, Ruth never thought of anything like this. Dan Golding the victim of something as simple and devastating as a fire. And Pendle University? It’s one of the new ones, like North Norfolk, the university where Ruth works. Nothing wrong with that, just that she’d always imagined Dan working at Cambridge or Harvard. Or diving for pearls off some South Sea Island.