The Janus Stone

Ruth’s back is aching so she takes off her gloves and sits down to drink a glass of water. Looking at the little skull on the examination table, she suddenly feels unaccountably sad. She knows that the dead child is more important than the cat. The cat is simply a clue, an oddity, a slightly macabre detail. But even so, as she looks down on the thin little bones, Ruth feels a surge of pity. She lost her beloved cat, Sparky, earlier in the year and she still misses her. Probably this cat too was loved by someone. She sends a message back in time. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the things that humans do to animals.’ She is aware that, in this very university, animals are experimented on every day (once or twice a year there are demonstrations from animal rights protesters and security is tightened) but, by and large, she accepts this as being necessary for the common good. But this – this is different.

Was the cat a sacrifice? Was it practice? Kill an animal first, work up to the ultimate horror of killing a child? What did Max say? ‘It was traditional to sacrifice black animals to Hecate.’

On impulse Ruth goes over to the box containing the other evidence bags from the site. Bags of soil and vegetation for analysis, fragments of brick and stone and, yes, there it is… She gets out the plastic bag containing the Roman signet ring. Carefully she tips the ring onto her hand. A handwritten label says ‘Bronze ring with intaglio, probably Roman.’ The device is hard to see, three slightly overlapping rings. ‘Looks like a shamrock,’ Irish Ted had suggested, appropriately enough. But now, looking at it under the microscope, Ruth can see that the three circles are actually three heads.

Hecate. The three-headed goddess.

13th June Ides

I am Agamemnon. I am the master of the house. Magister mundi sum. The responsibility is mine and, naturally, as the Master, I have certain duties. Did Agamemnon enjoy making the sacrifice demanded of him? No, but he did it just the same. Sometimes you just have to do what must be done. It is lonely being the master of the house and I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t wish that it could go back to the way it was. That I didn’t have to do this thing. But the gods must be appeased. That’s what no one understands. Agamemnon needed a fair wind for Troy. I need our walls to be safe. It comes to the same thing in the end.

CHAPTER 14

The police pathologist is young and exhaustingly enthusiastic. He is called Chris Stevenson and Ruth knows him only by sight. She knew the previous pathologist better; a charming old-world type who always wore a bow tie and velvet slippers. Stevenson bounds into the autopsy room on puffy American sneakers, his white coat flapping behind him. The old world is obviously gone for ever.

‘Dr Galloway! Come to give us your expert opinions?’

‘I’ll try,’ says Ruth tightly.

She knows that today’s post-mortem will be a battle. In a normal autopsy, Stevenson would be the expert. He is a flamboyant practitioner who likes, for example, to remove the internal organs in one block rather than in four groups, as is usual. Nelson describes a previous autopsy where Stevenson gestured so theatrically with his scalpel that two police probationers fainted. Stevenson also likes to talk all the time, a constant stream of information, observation and free-association chat in the manner of a Sunday morning DJ – albeit a DJ primarily concerned with blood, guts and medical incisions. Nelson loathes him, Ruth knows.

But, today, there are only bones – dry, academic bones. There is no need for any cutting or sawing or dramatic flourishes. And Ruth will be the expert. Stevenson will conduct the examination but he will be forced to defer to Ruth at every turn. No wonder his flow of humorous commentary has a slightly brittle edge this morning. Ruth says nothing. She is looking at the bones already laid out on the dissection table. Such a small skeleton. Such a little life.

Nelson arrives late, earning him a jokey ‘nice of you to join us’ from Stevenson.

‘Just get on with it,’ growls Nelson. He looks unfamiliar in his surgical scrubs, a plastic hat over his dark hair. Probably the most unflattering garments in the world, thinks Ruth, aware that she looks like a large green barrage balloon.