The Janus Stone

‘Vesta,’ supplies Max. ‘Just think of the matches. Her Greek name was Hestia. The women of the house would be responsible for making sure the fire didn’t go out and for making offerings to her.’

‘Haven’t there been instances of bodies being found buried inside Roman houses?’ asks Ruth.

‘In early Roman times it was quite usual for a dead family member to be buried inside the house,’ says Max. ‘We often find the letters DM by these tombs. Dii Manes – the spirits of the dead or The Good.’

Ruth shivers, thinking of the little body buried under the door in Woolmarket Street. The Good. Children are good, by anybody’s reckoning, and innocent. But this does not seem to stop people from doing dreadful things to them.

‘Children’s bodies have been found too, haven’t they?’ she says.

‘Yes. In Cambridge in the seventies twelve newborn babies were found buried under a Roman building. We don’t know if they had died naturally, maybe even stillborn, or if they were sacrifices.’

‘The field team have found a body on a building site in Norwich,’ says Ruth slowly. ‘I think it’s headless.’

Max looks at her with interest. ‘Modern?’

‘I don’t know. We haven’t done carbon dating yet. But the grave cut looks fairly recent.’

‘The bones could still be old though.’

‘Yes,’ agrees Ruth. ‘But the skeleton looks intact. I think it was buried when the doorway was built.’

‘When was that?’

‘Well, the house is Victorian but the entrance and portico could be later, I suppose. It used to be a children’s home.’

Thinking of the children’s home reminds her of something else. She gets her notebook out of her pocket. ‘Do you know what this means?’ she asks. ‘It was an inscription found at the site.’

Max looks down at the words and, for a second, his face seems to darken. Ruth wonders if she has offended him. ‘I couldn’t understand it myself,’ she says, rather nervously. ‘I didn’t go to the right kind of school.’

‘Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit,’ says Max slowly, ‘It means: everything changes, nothing perishes.’

‘Oh… thanks. Did you learn Latin at school then?’ He has a rather public-school look to him, Ruth thinks. Maybe it’s the curly hair. Or the Range Rover.

Max smiles, his laid-back charming self again. ‘No, but I’ve learnt a good deal of Latin over the years. The Romans are my speciality after all.’

‘Everything changes, nothing perishes,’ repeats Ruth. ‘What sort of a motto is that?’

‘The perfect motto for an archaeologist,’ says Max, clambering out of the trench.

*

Nelson drives back to the police station, trying to ignore Clough who is noisily eating a packet of crisps. When out on a case Clough eats almost constantly: crisps, sweets, innumerable takeaways. It’s a wonder he’s not the size of a house, thinks Nelson sourly. In fact, Clough has less of a gut than he has. There’s no justice.

‘Do you think it’s a murder?’ asks Clough, crunching away. The smell of cheese and onion is making Nelson feel sick. Perhaps I’ve got morning sickness, he thinks. He suffered psychosomatic pains with both Michelle’s pregnancies. But Ruth may not be pregnant and, even if she is, the child might not be his.

‘I’ve got no idea,’ he says shortly. ‘And you had no business speculating.’

‘Come on, boss, you know what those nuns and priests are like. I read a book once, set in Ireland, and the things they did to those poor kids.’

Nelson is silent, thinking of his own schooling in Catholic establishments. The brothers had been strict, he remembers, strict but fair. And he’d been no angel at school, probably deserved everything he got. He remembers the parish priest, Father Damian, a slight, insignificant man, worshipped by Nelson’s mother who was forever ascribing dogmatic opinions to him. ‘Father Damian thinks, Father Damian says…’ He couldn’t remember Father Damian himself ever offering an opinion about anything, except about the horses. He’d been a betting man he remembers.

‘Lots of those books are bollocks,’ he says, taking a corner too fast. ‘Authors make everything up just to make money.’

‘Nuns are creepy, though,’ says Clough, unabashed. ‘Those black robes, those headdresses. Spooky.’

‘My aunt’s a nun,’ says Nelson, to shut him up. In fact, Sister Margaret Mary of the Precious Blood is his great-aunt, his grandmother’s sister. He hasn’t seen her for years.

‘You’re joking! You a Catholic then?’

‘Yes,’ says Nelson, though he hasn’t been to church since Rebecca’s first holy communion, eight years ago.

‘Bloody hell, boss. I wouldn’t have had you down as religious.’

‘I’m not,’ says Nelson. ‘You don’t have to be religious to be a Catholic.’

CHAPTER 6

Ruth and Max are in the bar of the Phoenix. Ruth is ragingly hungry once again. She has torn open a packet of crisps (plain) and is having to force herself even to put up a pretence of sharing them with Max.

‘No thanks.’ Max waves the crisps away and takes a gulp of beer. In celebration, Ruth puts four into her mouth.