The Crossing Places

He must be about four now. After Daniel's birth (she sent a teddy), Ruth had heard nothing until the text message on New Year's Eve. Happy New Year love Peter. Nothing more, but just for a second Ruth had felt her heart contract.

'Peter. Hallo.'

'Bit of blast from the past, eh?'

'You could say that, yes.'

A brief silence. Ruth tries to imagine Peter at the other end of the phone. Is he calling from work? From home?

She imagines Victoria, whom she has never met, sitting by his side with Daniel on her lap. 'What's Daddy doing?'

'Shh darling, he's ringing his ex-girlfriend.'

'So.' Very hearty. 'How've you been, Ruth?'

'I've been fine. How about you?'

'Fine. Working hard.'

Peter teaches history at University College, London, where Ruth did her first degree. She imagines him there: the view of dusty plane trees, of bicycles chained against railings, of London buses, and tourists wandering lost around Gordon Square.

'Still at UCL?'

'Yes. What about you?'

'Still at North Norfolk. Still digging up bones and fighting with Phil.'

Peter laughs. 'I remember Phil. Is he still keen on his geophys gadgets?'

'I think he's shortly going to mutate into a machine.'

Peter laughs again but this time the laugh ends rather abruptly. 'Look Ruth. The thing is, I've got a sabbatical next term-'

'You too?' The words are out before she can stop them.

'What do you mean?'

'Oh, it's just – Erik's got a sabbatical too. He's coming over next week.'

'Erik! The old Viking himself! So you're still in touch?'

'Yes.' Slightly defensively.

'Well, the thing is… I'm writing a book on Nelson.'

'Who}'

A confused pause. 'Horatio Nelson. Admiral Nelson.

You remember, I did my postgraduate research on the Napoleonic Wars.'

'Oh… yes.' The other Nelson in her life has temporarily caused her to forget the most famous Nelson of all. Of course, he was from Norfolk too, there are hundreds of pubs named after him.

'Well, I'm planning to visit Burnham Thorpe. You know, where he was born. I'm renting a cottage nearby and I thought I could pop over and see you.'

Several things cross Ruth's mind. You must have been to Burnham Thorpe before, without 'popping over' to see me, why is this different? Will your wife be there? Is this only about research? Why ring me after all this time?

Aloud she says, 'That would be great.'

'Good.' Peter sounds relieved. 'And I'd like to see the Saltmarsh again. God, I remember that summer. Finding the henge in the mud, those hippies who kept putting spells on us, old Erik telling ghost stories around the campfire.

Do you remember when I nearly drowned?'

'Yes.' Peter is suffering from an attack of nostalgia, she knows the symptoms. She mustn't join in otherwise she'll be swept away too, drowning in a quicksand of the past.

Peter sighs. 'Well, I'll be in touch. It'll probably be next week or the week after. Will you be around?'

'Yes, I'll be around.'

'Great. Bye then.'

'Bye.'

Ruth replaces the receiver thoughtfully. She doesn't know why Peter is coming to see her; she only knows that the past seems to be converging on her. First Erik, then Cathbad, now Peter. Before she knows it, she will have gone back in time ten years and will be walking along the beach, hand-in-hand with Peter, her hair six inches longer and her waist four inches thinner. She shakes her head. The past is dead. She, as an archaeologist, knows that better than most. But she knows too that it can be seductive.

Rain is still drumming against the windows. Getting up, she strokes Flint, who is now stretched out on the sofa, eyes shut, pretending she isn't there. She'd better check that Sparky isn't outside meowing to be let in – although she has a cat flap, Sparky really prefers having the door opened for her. Ruth opens the door.

The rain flies in her face, blinding her. Spluttering, she wipes her eyes on her sleeve. And then she sees it. Sparky is on the doorstep but she isn't meowing or making any other sound. She is lying on her back and her throat has been cut.

CHAPTER 10

Nelson is, for once, driving slowly. It is still raining hard, turning the narrow lanes into treacherous gullies, but Nelson isn't usually the sort of driver who worries about weather conditions. No, Nelson is dawdling because he has just been to see Scarlet's parents and feels he needs some time to recover before getting back to the station. He has had to tell the parents, Delilah and Alan, that not only has the investigation made no progress, but the police want to bring sniffer dogs to search the family garden. Cases like this, it's usually the parents. That's what he told Ruth and although maybe he had been trying to shock her, in his experience it has often proved true. One of his first cases involved a missing child in Lytham. Hundreds of police hours spent searching, a young mother very eloquent and moving at the press conference and then Nelson, a young PC, making a routine call at the house, had noticed a strange smell in the downstairs loo. He'd called for reinforcements but, before they arrived, had already found the tiny corpse, stuffed into the cistern. 'She gets on my nerves,' said the mother, apparently unrepentant. 'She's a little devil'. The present tense. It still gets to him. He'd been commended for his work on that case but he remembers weeks, months, of sleepless nights afterwards, retching as he remembered the smell, the sight of the water-bloated body.

He's ruling nothing out but he doesn't really suspect Scarlet's parents. Alan was away anyway and Delilah Delilah is a fading flower child in bare feet and fringed skirts. She irritates the hell out of him but he can't really imagine her as a killer. Never assume, he tells himself.

'Never assume', his first boss, Derek Fielding, used to say, laboriously. 'It makes an ass out of you and me. Get it?'

He'd got it, but he wasn't going to give Fielding the satisfaction of laughing; probably why it took so long for the old bastard to promote him, despite the commendation.

But the point is a good one. Never make assumptions about people or circumstances. Delilah Henderson could have killed her daughter. She was in the right location and probably had the means to hand. It had taken her three hours to report Scarlet missing. 'I thought they were just playing hide and seek,' she had sobbed. Nelson disapproves (what sort of mother would not notice, for three hours, that her four-year-old was missing?) but, on balance, he puts it down to the sort of lackadaisical parenting of people like the Hendersons. And she had been distraught, God knows, when she finally realised that Scarlet had gone. She was still distraught, weeping today and clutching an old photo of Scarlet, heart-break ingly happy astride a pink bike with stabilisers. Delilah had hardly taken in the news about the garden, had just clutched at Nelson, begging him to find her baby. Nelson slows down almost to walking pace as the windscreen wipers battle against the onslaught of water. Sometimes he hates his job. Christ, he could do with a cigarette but it's only January, a bit early to break his New Year resolution.

When his phone rings he almost doesn't answer; not for safety reasons – Nelson thinks hands-free phones are for wimps – but because he just can't be bothered with anything else today. When he does press RECEIVE an almost inhuman sound greets him, a sort of sobbing wail. Nelson squints at the caller identification. Ruth Galloway. Jesus.

'Ruth? What is it?'

'She's dead,' wails Ruth.

Now Nelson does stop the car, almost skidding into a waterlogged ditch.

'Who's dead?'

'Sparky.' Long, gulping pause. 'My cat.'

Nelson counts to ten. 'Are you ringing me up to tell me about a dead cat?'

'Someone cut her throat.'

'What!"

'Someone cut her throat and left her on my doorstep.'

'I'll be right over.'