The Chalk Pit - Prologue and Chaper 1

P R O LOG U E
3.20 a.m., 3 June 2015

He shouldnt really be driving; they all know that. But Solly
has probably had the least to drink of all of them and,
besides, he has a calm self-possession that makes him able
to carry off all sorts of excesses and still remain the reliable,
charming boy next door. Boy from the next-door mansion,
as Dennis once put it.
But there are no buses and no one has the money for a
taxi so Solly takes the keys from Em and drives slowly and
carefully round the one-way system. Dennis and Em dont
help by going Whee at the corners and shouting witticisms
to the few pedestrians to be seen in Norwich at three oclock
on a Wednesday morning. One of them, a police officer
pushing a bike, looks up and shakes his fist.
Get off and milk it! yells Dennis.
Shut up, Dennis, says Grace. People hate students
enough as it is.
Grace is sitting next to Solly and feels obliged to talk to
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him, to keep him concentrating on the road. This is difficult
enough when the road in question keeps swooping up in
front of her and tying itself in knots. God, just how much
had she drunk? Those tabs on top of it too.
Solly is doing well though, not speeding, looking from
left to right at junctions. They are heading out of town now
on the A147. Dennis and Em have fallen asleep but Grace
tries to stay awake for Sollys sake. They take the turn into
Denning Road. Solly goes slightly wide but theres nothing
coming so no harm done.
I like this road, says Grace. Id love to live in one of those
big houses.
Then youll have to marry a rich man, darling, says Solly,
slurring slightly.
Thats a bit... She cant think of the word. Crap, she
settles for. I might get rich on my ... on my own ... in
my... Christ! Solly!
But he has seen it too. A man standing in the middle of
the road with his arms outstretched. Theres something biblical about him: long hair and beard, wearing robes or some
kind of cloak. Grace yells and Solly jams on the brakes. The
car skids to the other side of the road and Dennis and Em
wake up.
What the...?
There was a man... a man in the road, says Grace.
But when they get out of the car there is no one there,
just the long road between the tall dark houses.
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CHA P T E R 1
Today our acronym is COAST. Concentration, observation,

anticipation, space and time.
The speaker, a woman in her fifties, with short hair and
keen-looking spectacles, beams around the room. DCI Harry
Nelson, in the back row, stares back, stony faced. In his head
he works on another acronym: crap, outrageous, abysmal...
You might be saying to yourself, says the woman, why
am I wasting a morning at a speed awareness course? The
answer is because it can save lives.
She looks at them solemnly, glasses glinting. The man
next to Nelson, who earlier introduced himself as a minicab
driver called Steve, is apparently asleep. Nelson gave his
name simply as Harry and didnt vouchsafe an occupation.
The woman writes her name Bev Flinders in insultingly large letters on the whiteboard. She says that she is a
driving instructor. Definitely not a policewoman! Some of
the more unctuous class members laugh.
So why do we have speed limits at all?
Bevs voice drones on. The room, a prefab in the station
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car park, is too warm and smells of instant coffee. Unlike
Steve, now snoring gently, Nelson doesnt feel tempted to
sleep. Hes too busy brooding on his wrongs. He shouldnt
be here at all. He should be out solving crimes, maybe
speeding slightly in the process but you cant catch criminals keeping to the thirty-mile-an-hour speed limit, can
you? But his boss has ordered him to attend this course
along with Steve, two HGV drivers and a clutch of women
who seem to view it as a pleasant morning out. Yes, not
content with giving him a tangled love life and a stressful
working life, God has now delivered the biggest blow of all.
Nelson has a woman boss.
Ruth has no time for such introspection. She is currently
delving deep, not into her own life but into the ground
below Norwich. She is in a cellar below the Guildhall, a
square, crenellated building that stands like a little castle
in the heart of the city. The Guildhall is now council offices
but it has, in its past, been a toll house, a court and a prison.
The most dangerous prisoners were kept here, in underground cells. The undercroft, this lower region is called,
and plans are afoot to develop it as an exhibition space and
even a restaurant. This part is quite pleasant, the walls are
stone and there are some rather attractive vaulted pillars,
but Ruth knows that things are about to get worse. She is
going to have to go lower still, into a tunnel that has previously been closed off. Ted, from the Field Archaeology team,
has removed the planks covering the tunnel entrance and is
looking at her expectantly. Ruth knows that, as the head of
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Forensic Archaeology, she should go first but the problem
is that she has never been that keen on small, enclosed
spaces...
After you. Ted grins, showing piratical gold teeth.
Perhaps it would be better if I followed you. Youve got
the torch.
Ted looks as if he knows what shes thinking. But, to his
credit, he doesnt just hand her the torch but ducks his head
and enters the tunnel. Ruth follows, taking care to keep
close to Teds high-vis tabard. The tunnel leads downwards
and the plastered walls give way to chalk, the floor moving
quickly from brick to rubble that crunches underfoot. Teds
torch picks out a well-crafted roof, lined with brink and
flint.
Probably an old chalk mine, he says, his voice echoing
slightly. Lots of chalk mines in Norwich.
Ruth puts her hand on the wall. Its unpleasantly moist
to the touch, as if its sweating.
Theres a tunnel from the castle to the Guildhall, says
Ruth. She doesnt want to speak much as she has the idea
that she has only so much breath to spare. She is unpleasantly conscious of all that stone and earth above her. Her
hard hat feels as if it is pressing down on her head.
Someone once told me that you could walk all the way
from UEA to the town centre underground, says Ted. Shall
we just keep going?
Since the University of East Anglia is situated about
three miles out of the city, Ruth doubts this. Theres something disconcerting about the idea of these underground
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thoroughfares, as if the city has a dark twin, another life
going on beneath its surface.
Ive heard that theres a tunnel from the Guildhall to St
Johns, she says, not answering Teds question.
The Catholic cathedral? says Ted. Maybe our body is a
bricked-up nun or some such.
He sounds incredibly cheery about the prospect. The
reason Ted and Ruth are in the tunnel is because of a
grisly discovery made by a surveyor working for an architect called Quentin Swan, who is planning to build an
underground restaurant below the Guildhall. The surveyor, Mark Copeland, was assessing the site for health
and safety risks. In the course of his investigations he sampled the ground using something called a borehole drilling
machine. According to Copelands report, which Ruth read
that morning, the hand-held machine pulls out a vertical
plug of soil and, in this sample, were what looked like
human bones. Copeland informed the council, which owns
the building. The council called the police and then Ruth,
in that order. When Ruth arrived at the Guildhall she had
half expected to see Nelson waiting for her but there had
only been Irish Ted in his high-vis vest and hard hat.
The bones were buried, not bricked up, says Ruth. Were
nearly there, I think. Copeland said about halfway along.
Yes. Ted shines his torch. Here are the little beauties, if
Im not mistaken.
On the tunnel floor is a neat pile of earth, obviously
excavated by the borehole machine. In amongst the chalky
rubble, Ruth can see something that gleams even whiter in
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the darkness. She bends down. They are human bones; she
can see that immediately. She thinks she can see a tibial
shaft, maybe a femur. She takes a photograph and starts
sketching the location in her notebook. She has almost forgotten that they are underground.
Is it a whole skeleton? says Ted, behind her.
I dont think so, says Ruth. Unless the rest of the body
is still buried. We might need to get a proper excavation
done.
Ruth opens her backpack and takes out gloves, a trowel
and a small brush. Ted kneels down beside her. Hes an
experienced field archaeologist and knows the procedure
well. Ruth lifts out the first bone. It is a tibial shaft but it
is broken, smashed almost, in the middle. Ruth shines her
torch on it and sees faint parallel lines scored into the bone.
She runs her gloved fingers over the end of the bone; it is
blunt, not quite rounded.
What is it? says Ted.
I dont know, says Ruth, maybe nothing. She passes the
bone to Ted who marks it with a tiny number and places
it in an evidence bag. Ruth then marks it on her skeleton
sheet. It doesnt take them long. There are four long bones:
two tibias, part of a femur and an arm bone, probably a
humerus. There are also some smaller bones that look like
ribs. All the bones have a dull shine, almost as if they are
made of glass.
How old do you think they are? asks Ted. Theyre completely defleshed.
Yes, says Ruth. That could mean that theyre old but
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they look so clean. Youd normally expect some discolouration with old bones.
These tunnels must be pretty old, says Ted.
Some of the chalk tunnels are medieval, says Ruth, but
this doesnt look like a mining tunnel to me. It could be
linked to one of the churches, like I said. We must be some
way from the Guildhall by now.
Perhaps weve found our nun after all.
Perhaps. Its going to be hard to determine the sex
without the pelvic bones or the skull. Unless we can get
some DNA. Well know more when we send the bones for
carbon-14 testing.
Do you think theyre all from the same body? says Ted.
I think so, says Ruth. The leg bones look the same
length.
Long bones, says Ted, probably a man. I wonder where
the head is?
And the rest of the skeleton.
Its a mystery, Ruth, says Ted, and I know how much
you like a mystery.
Ruth is silent. She enjoys an intellectual puzzle as much
as the next archaeologist but shes not sure how much mystery she wants from bones buried in a medieval tunnel. It
would be nice to have an answer, actually. A nice, safe academic answer that could be filed away in a report.
Ruth packs the bones into a box marked Pathology. Ted
shines the torch on her while she does this and then hands
it over with a flourish.
You go first. Ill carry the box.
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Ruth doesnt mind going first on the way back. Her back
aches and her mouth is dry. Shes longing to be above ground
again, drinking tea in the Guildhall caf. She thinks again
of the layers of soil and stone above her head. Its almost as
if the weight is crushing her, making it impossible for her
lungs to expand...
Are you all right? says Ted, behind her. Youre panting.
Im fine, says Ruth, making an effort to breathe properly.
She can see the entrance now, the dim light in the undercroft looking as bright as a beacon.
When she steps through the archway, though, she sees
that the light is partly coming from a torch held by DS Judy
Johnson.
Judy! I didnt think it would be you.
The boys are all busy, said Judy. And when I heard that
youd found another body...
Its not a body, says Ruth. Just a few bones. And I didnt
find them. The surveyor did.
You didnt fancy coming down for a look? says Ted,
emerging from the tunnel with the box.
No, youre all right, says Judy. So, were the bones human?
Yes, says Ruth, but we wont be able to tell how old they
are until we get the carbon-14 analysis.
Were guessing old, though, says Ted. My bet is medieval. Want to have a flutter?
No thanks, says Judy, a bookies daughter. When will
you have the results?
Ill send the samples off today, says Ruth. Itll probably
take a couple of weeks.
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And no idea what the bones were doing in the tunnel?
No, says Ruth. It looks like they were buried and the
surveyor disrupted them digging for samples.
Could be a bricked-up nun, says Ted. Dont forget the
nun.
Where are you off to now? says Ruth to Judy, as they
climb the stairs to the upper levels. Have you got time for
a cup of coffee? Theres a good caf here.
That would be great, says Judy. Ive got a bit of time.
Clough and Tanya are on a call out Denning Road way. A
massive great hole appeared in the road last night.
What about the boss man? asks Ted.
Speed awareness course, says Judy.
Ted and Ruth burst out laughing and, after a few seconds,
Judy joins in. They are still laughing when Quentin Swan
hurries in through the main doors, anxious about the fate
of his subterranean dining experience.
05/10/2016 16:13:12

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P R O LOG U E

3.20 a.m., 3 June 2015

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Today our acronym is COAST. Concentration, observation,

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