Free The Woman In Blue: The Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries 8 by Elly Griffiths Page A

priests’). She’d adored the previous incumbent, Father Damian. Come to think of it, Damian went back to Ireland to recover from a drink problem. Maybe Tim’s right: there’s more of it around than you think.
    He’s about to ask Tim what he thought of Stanley and Jean, when his sergeant says, so urgently that Nelson turns to look at him, ‘Boss. I’ve got something to tell you.’
    ‘What?’ Nelson swerves to avoid a fallen branch.
    ‘I want a transfer.’
    ‘What?!’ Nelson swerves again, causing Tim to say, recklessly, ‘Look out!’
    ‘Don’t tell me how to drive,’ growls Nelson. ‘What do you mean, you want a transfer?’
    ‘I want to move. Away from Norfolk.’ After a pause Tim adds, ‘I’m sorry.’
    They have come to the outskirts of King’s Lynn. Nelson slows down, but only slightly. He says, ‘You’ve had a tough few months, what with that business at Blackstock Hall.’
    He’s referring to the time when Tim shot a man. There has been an inquiry, and Tim was completely cleared (there were extenuating circumstances, like the fact that he saved Nelson’s life), but there’s no doubt that the whole business was incredibly stressful for everyone involved.
    ‘Take some time off,’ says Nelson. ‘Think about it.’
    ‘I have thought about it,’ says Tim. ‘I’ve really enjoyed working for you, but I think it’s time to move on.’
    ‘Where will you go?’
    ‘Maybe back to Essex. To be near my family.’
    Nelson understands this. He sometimes feels a real pull to go back to his home, Blackpool, away from Norfolk and its flat, alien fields. But Tim doesn’t sound like a man yearning for home. He sounds disconsolate, as if he’s got nothing left to look forward to. When Tim first moved to Norfolk Nelson assumed it wouldn’t be long before he got himself a girlfriend and settled down. As far as Nelson knows, this hasn’t happened, although Tim’s a decent-looking boy who keeps himself fit.
    ‘We’ll miss you,’ he says now. ‘Cloughie will have no one to wind up.’
    ‘He’ll find someone,’ says Tim. But he still sounds depressed.

Chapter 9
     
    Ruth doesn’t open the letters until Kate has gone to bed. She feels that they need her full concentration and that’s impossible with Kate organising her Sylvanians into Hogwarts houses and insisting that every one of her bath toys takes to the water. There’s another reason too. She looks at the letters on her desk: brown envelopes (bad sign), addresses in capitals (ditto), and their appearance of having been read and reread several times. She’s reluctant to open them and let the nastiness out. Cathbad would say that it was about bad energy. He would have recommended lighting candles and drawing up a circle of protection, but Ruth takes her own precautions by pouring herself a large glass of red wine and putting on a Bruce Springsteen CD.
Dear Doctor Smithson,
I won’t call you Reverend because, as I will elaborate in this letter, you do not deserve the title. I am prepared to call you Doctor because this title you have earned without fear or favour. But I will never accept your right to call yourself a priest. ‘Man and Woman Created He Them’ (Genesis 1:27). Men and women are different, Doctor Smithson. Not better or worse. Different. I am not a misogynist, as you women academics would have me. I simply believe that men and women have different tasks in the world. Women have the privilege of bearing children. Men are the appointed protectors of the family. And Jesus appointed men to be the protectors of his church. Yes, all the disciples were men and to these men was given the gift of the Holy Spirit and the task of spreading the word of God. You and your fellow harpies are bringing this holy church into disgrace. It is obscene to see a woman on the altar, her hands on the Blessed Chalice. Our Blessed Lord said, ‘Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14:9). Priests are in His image. The Father, not the