The Crossing Places

'Jesus,' she says, 'you helped him, didn't you?'

Shona seems to look around for a means of escape, the trapped fox again, but then, as if finally surrendering, she collapses onto the sofa and covers her face.

Ruth comes nearer. 'You helped him, didn't you?' she says. 'Of course, he'd never have thought of all that T.S.

Eliot stuff by himself, would he? You're the literature expert. Your Catholic background probably helped too.

He supplied the archaeology and the mythology, you did the rest. Quite the perfect little team.'

'It wasn't like that,' says Shona dully.

'No? What was it like?'

Shona looks up. Her hair has come down and her eyes are wet, yet Ruth is beyond being moved by her appearance.

So Shona is beautiful and she's upset. So what? She's played that trick too many times before.

'It was him. Nelson,' says Shona. 'What?'

'Erik hates him,' says Shona, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. 'That's why he wrote the letters, to get at Nelson. To distract him. To stop him solving the case. To punish him.'

'What for?' whispers Ruth.

'James Agar,' says Shona. 'He was Erik's student. At Manchester. It was during the poll tax riots. Apparently a group of students attacked a policeman and he was killed.

James Agar was only on the outskirts of the group. He didn't do anything but Nelson framed him.'

'Who told you this? Erik?'

'It was common knowledge. Everyone knew it. Even the police. Nelson wanted a scapegoat so he picked on James.'

'He wouldn't do that,' says Ruth. Wouldn't he? She thinks.

'Oh, I know you like him. Erik says you've been totally taken in by him.'

'Does he?' Despite everything, the bitchiness of this still stings. 'And you weren't taken in by Erik, I suppose?'

'Oh, I was,' says Shona wearily. 'I was obsessed with him. I would have done anything for him.'

'Even helped to write those letters?'

Shona looks up, her face defiant. 'Yes,' she says. 'Even that.'

'But why, Shona? This was a murder investigation. You were probably helping the murderer get away.'

'Nelson's a murderer,' snaps Shona. 'James Agar died in prison, a year after Nelson framed him. He killed himself.'

Ruth thinks of Cathbad's poem 'In praise of James Agar'. She thinks of Nelson's face as he looked down at the scrawled lines. She thinks of the locked cabinet in Cathbad's caravan.

'Cathbad,' she says at last. 'Where does he come into this?'

Shona laughs, slightly hysterically. 'Didn't you know?'

she says. 'He was the postman.'

CHAPTER 23

Nelson has had a tough day. But then again, he almost can't remember a time when his life didn't consist of defending himself against people who wanted him sacked, trying to motivate an increasingly depressed team and ignoring Michelle's demands to come home while at the same time trying to catch a murderer. He had thought that Scarlet's funeral yesterday must be the lowest point. Jesus, that little white coffin, Scarlet's brothers and sisters looking so shocked and vulnerable in their new black clothes, seeing Lucy Downey's parents again and feeling how he had let them down. And then having to stand up and spout all that stuff about the resurrection and the life.

He had caught sight of Ruth in the congregation and wondered if she was thinking what he was thinking: the letter writer would love this.

And then there is Ruth. He knows he shouldn't have gone to bed with her. It was totally unprofessional as well as wrong. He has betrayed Michelle, whom he loves. He has, in fact, been unfaithful on two other occasions but he comforts himself that these were brief flings which didn't mean anything. Did Ruth mean something then? She's not really his type. But, that night, he has to admit, was something else. At that moment, Ruth seemed to understand him totally, in a way that Michelle has never done. She seemed to understand, to forgive him and offer herself to him in a way that even now threatens to bring tears to his eyes. Why had she done it? What does she see in him? He's not intellectual enough for her. She likes poncy professors with theories about Iron Age pottery, not uneducated Northern policemen.

So why had Ruth slept with him? She made the first move, he tells himself for the hundredth time. It wasn't all his fault. He can only suppose that she, like him, was caught up in the horror of it all, finding Scarlet's body, telling the parents. The only escape was in simple, straightforward sex. Some of the best sex, he has to admit, that he has ever had.

He doesn't know where he stands with her now. She's not the sort who will go all soppy, declaring undying love and begging him to leave Michelle. He has spoken to her on the phone a few times and she has always seemed fine, professional and calm, despite having some scary stuff to cope with. He admires that. Ruth is tough, like him. When he saw her yesterday at the dig, she had been very cool.

He'd watched her as he approached, she was totally absorbed in her work, he was sure she had no idea that he was there. He doesn't know why, but suddenly he wanted her to look up, to wave, smile, even to rush over and fling her arms round him. Of course, she hadn't done any of these things. She had simply carried on with her job, just as he was carrying on with his. It was the sensible, adult way to behave.

He had quite a good chat with that Erik Anderssen bloke at the dig. Of course he's an old hippie, way too old to have his hair in a pony tail and wear all those leather bracelets. But still, he had told Nelson some interesting things. Turns out there's a prehistoric forest buried underneath the Saltmarsh. That's why you sometimes find odd-looking stumps of trees and bits of timber. They even found some wood that had come all the way from North America. Anderssen had also talked about ritual. 'Think of a burial,' he'd said. 'From the body to the wood of the coffin to the stone of the graveyard.' Nelson had shivered, remembering Scarlet's coffin, that little wooden box, on its final journey.

He'd come back from the dig to be met by his boss.

Superintendent Whitcliffe is a career policeman, a graduate who favours linen suits and slip-on shoes. Just standing near him makes Nelson feel shop-soiled and more than usually untidy. He has the sensation, which he remembers from school, of his hands and feet being several sizes larger than they ought to be. Still, Nelson is not about to let Whitcliffe push him around. He's a good cop; he knows it and Whitcliffe knows it. He's not going to be the scapegoat on this case.

'Ah, Harry,' Whitcliffe had said, managing to convey the message that Nelson should have been there to meet him, though he had not said he was coming. 'Been out and about?'

'Following up leads.' He was damned if he was going to add 'sir'.

'We need to talk, Harry,' Whitcliffe had said, sitting down behind Nelson's desk and neatly establishing superiority.

'We need another statement.'

'We've got nothing to say.'

'That's just it, Harry,' sighed Whitcliffe, 'we need to have something to say. The press are after our blood. You arrest Malone and then release him-'

'On bail'

'Yes, on bail,' said Whitcliffe tetchily. 'That doesn't change the fact that you've got no evidence to charge him with the murders. And without him you've got no suspects.

With all the coverage of the little girl's funeral, we need to be seen to be doing something.'

The little girl's funeral. Whitcliffe had been there, in neat black tie, saying caring, compassionate things to Scarlet's parents. But for him it was just another job, an exercise in damage limitation. He had not, like Nelson, gone home and puked his guts out.

'I am doing something,'' said Nelson, 'I've been working flat out for months. We've searched every inch of the Saltmarsh…'

'I hear you've let the archaeologists loose there today'