The Crossing Places

She falls asleep and wakes a few hours later, still upright and stiff all over. Her phone has fallen to the floor and, hand trembling, she picks it up. No new messages. Ruth sighs and burrows down inside the bed. Right now, she is so tired that death seems almost an attractive option, to go to sleep and never wake up.

When she wakes again there is proper, yellow daylight outside the window and Shona is standing by her bed holding a cup of tea.

'You have slept well,' she says brightly. 'It's past nine.'

Ruth sips the tea gratefully. It's ages since someone brought her tea in bed. In daylight, sitting in Shona's sunny, tasteful spare room, she no longer feels destined to die a violent death. She feels, in fact, ready to fight. She gets up, showers, and dresses in her toughest, most uncompromising clothes (black suit, white shirt, scary earrings).

Then she goes downstairs ready to kick ass.

She is sitting in her car, ready to drive to work when her phone goes off. Despite her scary earrings, she is absolutely terrified, breathing hard, palms clammy.

'Hi Ruth. It's Nelson.'

'Oh. Nelson. Hello.' For some reason, her heart is still thumping.

'Just wanted you to know, we're releasing Malone tomorrow.'

'You are? Why?'

'Forensic reports have come back and there's none of his DNA on Scarlet. So we're charging him with writing the letters and that's all. He'll come up in court tomorrow and I expect he'll get bail.'.

'Is he still a suspect?'

Nelson laughs humourlessly. 'Well, he's the only one we've got, but we've got nothing that ties him to the murder. We haven't got any reason to keep holding him.'

'What will he do?'

'Well, he can't leave the area. I suspect he'll lie low though. Might even get police protection, what with all the media interest.' Nelson sounds so scornful that, despite herself, Ruth smiles.

'What did the… the post-mortem say?'

'Death was by asphyxiation. Looks like something was shoved in her mouth and she choked on it. Her hands were tied with some sort of plant plaited together.'

'Some sort of plant}'

'Yes, looks like honeysuckle and – you'll like this mistletoe.'

Ruth thinks of the letters and their mention of mistletoe.

Does this mean that the writer was the murderer? Does this mean that it was Cathbad after all? Then she thinks of the ropes that had hauled the henge timbers into place.

Honeysuckle rope. As Peter had remembered.

'Body had been in the ground about six weeks,' Nelson is saying. 'Hard to tell because of the peat. No sign of sexual abuse.'

'That's something,' says Ruth hesitantly.

'Yes,' says Nelson, his voice bitter. 'That's something.

And we'll be able to let the family have the body for burial.

That'll mean a lot to them.' He sighs. Ruth imagines him scowling as he sits at his desk, looking through files, making lists, deliberately not looking at the photo of Scarlet Henderson.

'Any road' – Nelson's voice changes gear, rather jerkily – 'How are you? No more calls from the press, I hope.'

'No, but I had an odd message last night.' Ruth tells him about the text message. She imagines Nelson's eyes shooting heavenwards. How much more trouble is this woman going to cause me?

'I'll get someone on to it,' he says, 'give me the number.'

She does so. 'Can you trace a mobile phone number?'

'Yes. Mobile phones have a unique number that they send out every time they make a call. It's like they check in to their local base. If we have the number, it won't be hard to trace the call. Of course, if he's clever, he'll have ditched the phone.'

'Do you think it was… him?'

'Christ knows. But we need to get you some protection.

How long are you staying with your mate?'

"I don't know.' As she says this, Ruth is assailed by a longing for her home. For her bed and her cat and her view over the ill-omened marshes.

'I'll send some men to watch her house and to keep your place under surveillance. Try not to worry too much. I don't think he'll come out into the open. He's too clever.'

'Is he?'

'Well, he's been too clever for me, hasn't he?'

'You'll catch him,' says Ruth with more conviction than she feels.

'Wish the press agreed with you. Take care, love.'

As she clicks off her phone, Ruth thinks: love?

At the university, the first person she sees is Peter. He's waiting outside her room and the memory comes back, unbidden, of seeing Nelson in the same place, so harsh and unyielding next to the conciliatory Phil. Unlike Nelson on that occasion, who had shown all the swagger of a professional coming into a room full of amateurs, Peter looks nervous, flattening himself apologetically against the wall every time a student goes past (which, as it is still early, is not very often).

'Ruth!' He steps forward to greet her.

'Peter. What are you doing here?'

"I wanted to see you.'

Ruth sighs inwardly. The last thing she needs this morning is Peter going on about his marriage and wanting to relive the henge dig.

'You'd better come in,' she says ungraciously.

In her office, Peter swoops on her cat doorstop. "I remember buying you this. I can't believe you've still got it.'

'It's useful,' says Ruth shortly. She's not about to tell him that she has kept it for sentimental reasons, which wouldn't be true. Well, not entirely true.

Peter sinks down in her visitor's chair. 'Great office,' he says, looking up at Indiana Jones. Ten years ago, she hadn't been important enough for an office of her own.

'Bit small,' she says.

'You should see my office at UCL. I have to share it with an archivist with a personal freshness problem. I only get the desk Mondays and Thursdays.'

Ruth laughs. Peter could always make her laugh, she thinks grudgingly.

Peter smiles too, looking fleetingly like his old self, but then his face looks grave again.

'What a terrible business on the Saltmarsh,' he says, 'you finding that little girl's body.'

'Yes.'

'How did you know she was there?'

Ruth looks up sharply. This seems an odd question.

Who was to say that it wasn't the police who discovered the location?

'It was a hunch,' she said at last. 'I was looking at the map and I saw a line leading from the Spenwell body to my Iron Age body to the henge. The posts that I showed you, the causeway, they seemed to mark the route. I thought of cursuses, underground paths that seem to point to significant things in the landscape. I suddenly realised that the causeway was a cursus.'

'And it led to the body?'

'Yes.'

'But are you saying it was deliberate? That someone buried her there knowing all about causeways and cursuswhatsits?'

'Cursuses. I don't know. The police think that maybe the murderer knows about archaeology.'

'Do they?' Peter is silent for a few seconds, obviously considering this. Then he looks up and says, 'That reminds me, Erik's set up a dig next week to look at the causeway.'

'Has he got police permission?'

'Apparently so. He spoke to your mate Nelson. He says it's OK as long as they don't go into the henge circle. And, obviously, they've got to show the police anything they find.'

Erik has spoken to Nelson, whom apparently he dislikes and distrusts. Nelson has given permission for the dig.

Ruth's head swims in a miasma of contradictions, loyalties, memories.

'When did you see Erik?' she asks at last.

'Yesterday. We had lunch together.'

'Did you?' Ruth tries to imagine the scene. Erik always liked Peter, seemed to approve of him as a partner for Ruth, but she can't quite imagine them sitting down for a cosy pizza together.

'Where did you go?'

'Oh, some sushi place he knows.'

So, no pizza then. 'Did he say anything about Cathbad?

Michael Malone?'

'Only that the police had got the wrong man. He seemed quite heated about it. Kept going on about a police state, you know what an old hippie he is.'