Kate starts to cry because she has been scratched by a bramble and Ruth takes her upstairs for her bath. Flint follows. Ruth has noticed before that, though the cat spends most of his time running away from Kate, he seems keen to stay in her vicinity. He always comes upstairs for the bath and the story and usually sleeps on the landing outside Kate’s bedroom. The strict night-time regime is a fairly recent innovation and Ruth is determined to stick to it. By insisting on bed at half-seven and lights out at eight she has eventually managed to claw some of the evenings back for herself. All day she has been looking forward to sitting downstairs with a glass of wine, limbs pleasantly heavy, watching crap TV and thinking about the dig. Except that now she knows that she will think about Dan – about the time that he dressed up as Margaret Thatcher to heckle a visiting dignitary, about the time he allegedly kidnapped a penguin from the zoo, about his amazing knowledge of Bowie lyrics, about the time when – drunk on cheap Pernod – he had kissed Ruth on the Number 68 bus to Camberwell Green.

Tonight the routine works smoothly. Kate is asleep before Ruth has finished her deliberately boring recital of Dora the Explorer’s antics. Ruth tiptoes downstairs. As she is pouring the wine she thinks that she wasted her friendship with Dan, her acquaintance with a truly unusual and anarchic mind. She should have kept in touch with him; they would have had something in common after all. Class differences fade with the years and, besides, she is middle-class now; she listens to Radio 4 and reads the Guardian. It has been decades since she has said the word ‘pardon’. They could have talked about archaeology, visited each other’s universities. Maybe, in some bizarre way, if Ruth had kept in touch with Dan, he wouldn’t have died in a house fire, far away from everyone who knew and loved him. She should have been a better friend to Dan but now it’s too late. She will never hear from him again.

The next day she receives a letter from him.

CHAPTER 2

The letter has been forwarded from the university:

Hi Ruth. Dan here. Dan Golding. I hope you remember me as otherwise this is going to get embarrassing. How is life treating you? I’m in the inhospitable and frozen north, teaching archaeology at Pendle University. I know you’re at North Norfolk. In fact, I’ve been following your career with interest and admiration. I know that you are one of the country’s leading experts on bone preservation.

So that’s why I’m writing. (Although, of course, it would be great to catch up. Do you see anything of Caz these days? Or Roly? Or Val?). I’ve made a discovery, Ruth, and it could be big. It could be huge. But I need your help. I need a second opinion on the bones. Things are a little sensitive here, which is why I’m writing not emailing. Can you ring me on the number below? I think you’ll be interested. Have you heard of the Raven King? Well, I think I’ve found him. Jesus, Ruth, it seems a long time since UCL, doesn’t it? We’re all older and sadder, if not wiser. This discovery, though, could change everything. But I’m afraid … and that’s just it. I’m afraid. Do ring me as soon as you get this letter. With love from your old friend

Dan

Ruth reads this letter standing by her front door, which is still open. It has been another exhausting day on the dig and her bones ache to be immersed in warm water. But there’s Kate and her night-time routine to be got through first. Kate is searching for Flint in the kitchen. Ruth can hear her calling through his cat flap. On a sudden, ridiculous impulse she dials the mobile-phone number at the foot of the letter. Dan’s voice, deep, amused, slightly sleepy, comes clearly across the years and the miles, from the land of death itself.

‘Hi. This is Dan Golding. I’m not here right now but if you leave your name and number I’ll get back to you. Promise.’

That, muses Ruth, as she puts her rucksack on the floor and goes into the kitchen to rescue Flint, is one promise that Dan won’t be able to keep. Hearing his voice – in the letter and over the phone – has shaken her badly. The jaunty Dan of the first paragraph she had recognised instantly. Of course, he knew that she would have remembered him. Dan wasn’t the sort of man that people forgot. And, despite everything, Ruth had felt a glow at the thought that he had remembered her and even followed her career ‘with admiration’. But the Dan of the last paragraph, the Dan who is older and sadder and afraid … she doesn’t recognise that person at all. What can have happened in the frozen and inhospitable north to have made Dan – Dan – so scared that he dared not write an email, so desperate that he needed help from her – Ruth Galloway from Eltham, the girl who was eighteen before she drank champagne and nineteen before she lost her virginity?

She extricates Flint from Kate and feeds them both. It has been another lovely day and from the open front door comes the scent of grass and the sea. Ruth makes herself a cup of tea and tells herself that this is all she fancies but before too long she’s tucking into cold pasta. She really must get a grip and stop eating Kate’s food. If someone asked her if she’d like a gourmet meal of sucked toast soldiers, congealed egg and soggy carrot sticks, she’d say no, thanks very much, but that’s what she eats every time she clears the table. Ruth has never been thin but she has an uneasy feeling that now she’s less thin than ever. Still, all that digging will have used up a few calories. Ruth takes another piece of fusilli.

‘Mine,’ says Kate.

What was Dan’s great discovery? It obviously included bones, by the sound of it. What sort of archaeology is there up there anyway? When Kate has finished eating, Ruth forces herself to throw away the remaining pasta then adjourns to the sitting room in search of an atlas. The cottage is tiny, just two rooms plus loo downstairs, with the front door opening straight into the sitting room. This room is full of books, overflowing on the shelves that reach up to the low ceiling and piled in heaps on the wooden floor, the sofa and the table. Ruth loves reading and is eclectic in her tastes: scholarly archaeological tomes jostle for space next to romances, thrillers and even children’s pony books. She’s sure there’s an atlas in there somewhere. She starts pulling books from the shelves and, enthralled, Kate joins her. ‘Me too.’

Here it is. The Reader’s Digest Atlas of Great Britain. Ruth takes the book to the table by the window. Where was Dan living? Fleetwood, Caz said. Near Lytham. Bloody hell – Ruth smoothes down the page – it’s right next door to Blackpool, the much-loved and much-missed home town of DCI Harry Nelson. She had no idea that Dan had strayed into Nelson’s territory. Fleetwood is right on the coast – there could be Viking remains, maybe even a Roman garrison town. But what could be so earth-shattering that Dan was scared to write about it in an email?

The Raven King, he had said. Abandoning the printed word, Ruth switches on her laptop. Kate is sitting on the floor, apparently absorbed in Ruth’s tattered edition of The Women’s Room. Excellent choice, Kate.

Ruth googles ‘raven king’ and, seconds later, her screen is full of heavy metal lyrics, on-line gaming tips and images of swarthy men in feathered cloaks. The Raven King is obviously a potent symbol but, trawling through the sites, Ruth can only find a few solid references. One is to a Celtic God and hero called Bran, or Raven. The other is to a fifteenth-century Hungarian king famous for his library. Neither of these seems to fit Dan’s great discovery. Interestingly, though, the Raven King myth is often especially linked to the north of England. Ruth thinks of Erik’s descriptions of the Norse God Odin, who sits with his ravens, Huginn and Muninn, on each shoulder. Huginn and Muninn; thought and memory. Odin, Erik used to say, saw all and knew all. Rather like Erik himself, or so Ruth thought once.