Read A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation for Free Online

university now, they still need him. They need both their parents, they need a home. And Michelle. He has loved her for almost all his adult life. She’s still one of the most beautiful women he’s ever seen and she’s the mother of his beloved daughters. How could he ever leave her? Once he fantasised that he could have both women, all three children, but that’s not the way the world works. But in honouring his wedding vows Nelson has betrayed Ruth. He can hear himself now, blustering, gabbling away, denying that there was ever anything between them. A phrase from the Good Friday gospel comes back to him. Before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times.
    Nelson sighs as he turns into the grounds of the hospital. ‘Car Park full. Current waiting time: 30 minutes.’ He has sinned and the wages of sin are death. Death has come uncomfortably close in the last few years. He can’t afford to make the Gods angrier than they already are. And, in the meantime, he has a dead body and Ruth Galloway is the only witness.
    The whole case bothers him. Neil Topham could have died from natural causes but the idea of the body lying beside the other, long-dead, corpse disturbs him. And those letters. Once before Nelson had had to deal with a case involving anonymous letters and there were enough echoesin the missives found in Topham’s desk to make the hairs on the back of his neck rise.
    You have ignored our requests.
    Now you will suffer the consequences.
    You have violated our dead.
    Now the dead will be revenged on you.
    We will come for you.
    We will come for you in the Dreaming.
    Nelson screeches to a halt in a bay reserved for emergency vehicles. Detective Sergeant Judy Johnson comes out to meet him. She’s one of Nelson’s best officers: bright, hard-working, excellent at the touchy-feely stuff. She got married earlier in the year and Nelson lives in dread of her announcing that she’s off on maternity leave. ‘That’s the trouble with promoting women,’ he grumbled to his boss. Whitcliffe had been shocked. ‘Harry! You just can’t say things like that these days.’ The list of things that Nelson can’t say seems to be getting longer by the minute. Still, he’s sure that Whitcliffe knows what he means. All that trouble training up an officer only to have her quit the moment she starts getting really useful. Or she’ll try and juggle work and babies and be constantly tired and stressed. Judy hasn’t said anything about starting a family though; come to think of it, she’s been rather quiet these last few weeks.
    ‘Hi boss.’
    They are standing in the entrance to A and E. A steady stream of injured revellers, some still in Halloweenmasks, trail past them. The walking wounded. And it’s not six o’clock yet.
    ‘Dead on arrival?’ Nelson greets Judy.
    She nods. ‘He’s in the morgue. I’ve contacted his parents. They’re on their way.’
    ‘Chris Stephenson had a look?’
    ‘Yes. He says he’ll do a post-mortem tomorrow.’
    ‘Say anything else useful?’
    ‘Signs of drug use.’
    Nelson thinks of the white powder found in the desk drawer. Was it for Topham’s private use only? What was going on at the Smith Museum?
    ‘Cause of death?’ he asks, stepping aside to let a reeling man dressed as a mummy go past.
    ‘Not sure. Could have been heart attack.’
    ‘I’d better have a look.’
    Judy follows Nelson across the car park, towards a discreet sign saying ‘Hospital Morgue’. On their way they pass a couple of nurses wearing witches’ hats and a disturbingly realistic vampire, swigging Bull’s Blood from the bottle.

CHAPTER 4
     
    It seems impossible that six children can make this much noise. Ruth’s little house seems to be swelling with sound, its sides straining under the pressure of chocolate fingers, party games and an exuberant rendering of ‘Happy Birthday Dear Katie’. This last reminds Ruth uncomfortably of Nelson, who persists in calling her Katie. Why can’t people